Neighbours From Hell
by apriiil
Summary: Lucy's neighbours are, for the most part, interesting characters. But she loves them all to bits, and even if she met them under some pretty strange circumstances, she wouldn't give up her apartment family for anything in the world.
1. Friday Night

**A/Ns:** _So, I came across some apartment AU prompts on tumblr the other day, and I realised they were too good not to use, so... Yeah, it's another series. Sort of. It's basically going to be a bunch of connected one-shots about how Lucy meets all of her horrible neighbours after moving in, and it's not exactly going to be in order. You'll be able to tell when it's set, because if it's not obvious in the story itself, I'll mention when it is set._

 _And yes, it's BixLu, but it does not actually focus on that relationship all that much. Don't ask why it's BixLu (or if you really want to it, it's because Empress of Everything - lookin' at you - is an enabler). It just works. It always works. Most of it will be about the broships and BrOTPs though, and each character will get their own chapter. Most will be about this length if not a little longer or shorter, since it's just something to do when I get bored and don't want to work on any of my other stories. It's just a bit of fun, but I still hope you all like it._

* * *

 **FRIDAY NIGHT**

* * *

The first Friday of every month was always spent in Gajeel, Levy, and Wendy's apartment. That was just how it had always been. Or at least, it was how it had been for the last year or so, but no one had any desires to be giving up their Friday night fun in the near future.

They would all pile in there with food and alcohol of all sorts (or in Rogue's case, his Batman travel mug filled with his favourite type of coffee if he didn't feel like getting drunk), and make themselves comfortable in the lavish apartment – it was the largest that any of them owned, after all. Blankets and pillows strewn across the lounges; bowls, bottles and glasses, and open packets of every kind of junk snack food imaginable scattered over every surface in the room, including the floor.

The first Friday of every month was their movie night, but it really hadn't always been like that.

A year earlier, half the people in the room hadn't known each other at all. At best, they'd only seen each other in the lobby or walked past them in the hall if they caught them at the right time. Of all the residents and tenants of the nine-storey apartment building in the middle of Magnolia, barely any of them were actually on first name basis with any of their neighbours.

Or at least they hadn't been until Lucy had moved into the apartment on the fifth floor. The blonde was really the only reason any of them knew each other at all. And now, not even two years after she had moved in, none of them could imagine their lives without each other. Hell, they were all actually thankful for Natsu telling Lucy about the apartment in the first place. If Natsu hadn't mentioned to his childhood friend and best friend that one of the apartments on his floor had become available for rent, she wouldn't have been there at all, and their Friday night movie nights wouldn't have ever come to exist.

No matter how much they hated Natsu for constantly somehow setting fire to something in his kitchen and getting everyone kicked out of their apartment for an hour or two until the fire brigade had deemed the apartment building safe to enter again, they were so very glad for his friendship with Lucy, because they were _all_ glad for their friendships with Lucy that had formed while she'd lived there. She had befriended each and every person sitting in that lounge room, and with that, they'd all befriended each other somehow. How she'd managed to do that with some, no one really knew, but they'd seemed to just put it down to her just being that kind of person. She just got along with everyone, whether they basically stole her cat and cuddle buddy, broke down her apartment door, went through her mail (it was really just a giant misunderstanding though), or even used her Wi-Fi.

No matter how they'd met, Lucy Heartfilia was undoubtedly best friends with every single person that sat in Gajeel, Levy, and Wendy's apartment on the first Friday of every month. And they were all best friends with each other, and they were a family.

And so on this particular Friday night, if anyone were to walk into the sixth floor apartment at the end of the hall, they'd truly be surprised at what they saw.

On one oversized armchair that Levy curled up in during the day and read in, sat a hulking blond with a lightning shaped scar named Laxus, and his green-haired partner, Freed, sat tucked into his side. On a beanbag sat Jellal with a heavily intoxicated Erza trying to sing the duet from _Phantom of the Opera_ with Lucy (which was something they were all unfortunately used to by then).

On the overly large L-shaped lounge (that they were all thankful for), Gajeel and Levy were curled up at one end under one blanket with Levy on the verge of spilling her wine everywhere; Rogue and Sting sitting on either side of a very, _very_ drunk Lucy and under another blanket, all cuddled up together; Bickslow sitting on the ground directly in front of Lucy with her legs resting over his shoulders, and all of the cats (including the three that he – er, Lucy – owned) resting on him and using him as a pillow and bed; and, an equally as drunk Cana on the other side of Sting and giggling just as much as Lucy, Levy, and Sting were.

Wendy was tucked into the corner with her bowl of popcorn and apple juice; Natsu and Gray were spread out and lounging over each other and constantly complaining about the other's body temperature on the other side of the lounge; and then, Cobra sitting cross-legged just next to them and snickering to himself with a sharpie in his hand as he drew all over Midnight's face, who was unfortunately – but not unusually – fast asleep on the chaise at the end.

All night and well into the early hours of the morning, all they did was drink, laugh, eat, and watch movies, or entire seasons of shows if they were short enough. Then, come morning (or afternoon, depending on when they all woke up), Gajeel would cook up the world's best breakfast, brunch, or lunch, depending on the time, and they would just continue to enjoy their end-of-week ritual that unfortunately only came once a month.

They were each other's family, and if it hadn't been for Lucy, it wouldn't have even been like that at all. None of them could imagine things being any different though, and they were all sure they'd miss the days where their once-a-month movie nights were a rare occasion, but they'd cross that bridge when they got it.

For now, though, they would just enjoy it, because that was where they all wanted to be on the first Friday of every month, and none of them would change it for the world.

* * *

 **A/Ns:** _Ah, so I hope you liked this. It's short, and obviously set towards the end/middle of their storyline. I just thought it was a nice place to start, and it's short and sweet. Or, well... I think it is._

 _I'll probably have the next chapter (I'm not telling you who it is either, hehe) up pretty soon, but like the rest of my stories, there'll be no set update time. It will happen when it happens._

 _If you liked it, let me know!_

 _Until next time._

 _\- April_


	2. The Case of the Mysterious Banana Bread

**A/Ns:** _Okay so, maybe the length of these will vary. This was much longer than I expected to be honest, but oh well. There was supposed to be more to this (more about the GaLu relationship in this, but that will be in a separate chapter), but I decided to keep this short(er). There'll be multiple chapters for each character involved. Like I said in the first one, most will be about how Lucy meets her new friends after she moves in, and others will kind of just be random ones to go with the prompts. And yes, Bix will be in a lot of the chapters, but as I said before, it will rarely focus on the romantic aspect of their relationship. Trust me when I say that..._

 _Now, on to the story!_

 _ **Prompt** : I just moved into the building and I found banana bread on my doorstep. I probably shouldn't eat it cause I have no idea where it came from buT IT'S DELICIOUS _  
_**Characters** : Gajeel, Levy, Lucy, Bickslow_

* * *

 _ **THE CASE OF THE MYSTERIOUS BANANA BREAD**_

* * *

It was Gajeel's day off from where he worked at Kurogane – a luxurious restaurant on the top floor of the third tallest building in Magnolia, offering three-sixty views of the bustling and growing city that nearly a million people called home. He rarely managed to get a day off those days, all because his grump of a father owned the place and he was _always_ making sure his son was working to get him off his ass (not that he was lazy, because he wasn't), but it wasn't _all_ bad. Being a sous chef there had its benefits, and the one he loved the most was being able to afford the rent for his sixth floor apartment with views of the park and lake behind their building. It was a much better view than the city itself when he was only on the sixth floor.

But still, Gajeel did like his job, even if his dad being his boss was just a little annoying and made him work his ass off, and even if the restaurant kitchen being mostly open for the customers and diners to see into drove him insane when he had to put up with all the annoying comments from their patrons. ' _Yes, that's how it's cooked. No, I'm not doing it wrong. I'm a trained chef, woman! Let me do my job and cook your overpriced appetiser!'_

But… No matter how much he loved his job (or hated, depending on the day and his mood), he loved his days off a whole lot more. Just being able to sit on his oversized lounge and stare up at his flat-screen T.V on the wall and play the most violent first-person-shooter games he could possibly find. That was the life, right there. It was the perfect way to relax.

…Until his roommate and best friend in the entire world, Levy, decided to start talking about books. God, the woman needed someone else to talk to about that crap. Gajeel knew that Levy was aware he honestly didn't care what she said when it came to whatever book she was reading that week, but she still talked to him, just because she didn't really have anyone else to talk to about that kind of thing about. His cousin, Wendy, was either at school or in the library studying, and Levy spent more time with her nose in a book to actually make some friends. Her high school and college friends had all moved to different towns or countries or were off living the suburban dream, and her work friends from the city library were all well above middle-age and she really didn't want her only friends aside from her roommates to be people twice her age.

So he indulged her, and put up with her ranting and raving, just because she was his best friend and he loved her.

But when Levy only walked into their apartment that day with her hands already clumsily tearing at the wrapped parcel in her hands – Gajeel knew that it was a book, because every two weeks, she would get a new book in the mail because of the book club she was a member of – and went straight over to the little office in their living area to grab a pair of scissors to cut it open, Gajeel quit his game, and looked over his shoulder at the quiet blue-haired woman.

That never happened. Something was off. Something was so very wrong, because that was the first time in the four-and-a-half years they'd been living together in that apartment alone that Levy had walked into their apartment with a new book and not said a single word. Usually, she was already on her third or fourth _'oh my goodness, I'm so excited to read this!'_ that was paired with a high pitched squeal before the door was even closed.

Staring at her curiously as she shoved the brown paper the book had been wrapped in into the wastebasket next to the desk, and then over to the hooks by the door to hang her bag and coat up, Gajeel realised that he was staring at an imposter. That was the only explanation. "Alright. Who are you and what have you done with Shrimp?" he asked quickly as he got up from the lounge and followed her over to the kitchen where she was grabbing a drink from the fridge.

Levy looked over her shoulder with an eyebrow raised. "What are you talking about, Gaj?" she laughed as she twisted the cap off the bottle of water.

"You're bein' weird."

"I am not," Levy quickly shot back as she stared at him, aghast. "You are."

Was Gajeel being weird? He certainly was not. Or at least, that's what he thought. Shrugging, he pointed to the book sitting on the counter between them. "Why aren't ya going on and on about your book yet? Usually your mouth is running at a million miles an hour about it by now," he explained, only proving his claims to his best friend being weird.

Levy only blinked slowly as she stared at Gajeel, then down to the book, her brow becoming more furrowed with each second. _That_ was what this was about? It was official, her roommate had lost the plot. "Why do you even care?" Levy asked as her lips twitched in amusement and turned to head down to her room, her book under her arm and drink in hand. "You hate it when I talk about my books."

"I dunno. 'Cause I know you like talking 'bout them and it freaks me out when you don't start raving about one of them."

She shrugged. Gajeel was a sweetheart deep down, but Levy figured it was time to stop subjecting him to her literary talk. It was a perfect time to do so anyway, because she had someone else to talk to about her favourite books – a pretty blonde who had been just as excited to receive her new book in the mail as Levy had. "I have someone else to talk to about my books now," she said simply.

"Wait…What?"

"I made a friend. Well, I think I did. She seems ni—hey, Gajeel! Let go of me!" she shrieked when the pierced man only wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest quickly.

"I'm so proud of you, Shrimpy." God, was Gajeel so happy for Levy. She needed more friends. It wasn't healthy for her only friends to be a sixteen-year-old girl, a twenty-six-year-old man, two cats, and a whole bunch of middle-aged women from the city library and the people she talked to online about her favourite _fanfics_. She needed people her own age who shared her own interests, and if this mystery woman happened to be someone Levy could rave to about her favourite books, then it was all the better!

"Oh, just get off me, you big softy," Levy mumbled as she pulled herself out of his grasp. "But that does remind me."

"Eh?"

She sat down on the edge of her bed and brought a foot up on the edge to begin untying her boots after dropping her book down beside her. "Since she's new to the building, that means you need to make some more banana bread."

Gajeel groaned as he slumped in the doorway. It was always the banana bread, and he wanted to hate Levy for making him do it that one time when Rogue and Sting had moved into the apartment right next to theirs. Now, after living in that building for nearly five years and seeing countless name changes on the plaques for the mailboxes down in the lobby, Gajeel had made a loaf of his 'famous' banana bread for every new tenant. If it wasn't for Levy, he wouldn't do it at all. She was the one who checked the mail every day, so she was the one who informed Gajeel of them getting new neighbours.

Rolling his eyes as Levy dropped her shoes into her wardrobe and closed the door, Gajeel began to turn away from her room with a frustrated sigh. It was his day off, after all, so what else was he going to do other than make banana bread for the new girl? "What apartment is she in?"

"502, I think," Levy answered before looking up as if a light bulb went off in her pretty little head. "Oh! And I don't think you ever gave the person in 503 any either."

"Wait, the demon moved out? When the fuck did that happen?"

"About six months ago, Gajeel," she laughed.

"Oh. Huh." It wasn't as if he knew the demon – or, Mirajane, or something like that – very well. He'd only run into her a few times over the near year she'd been living there, but he'd learned she had an interest in cooking, and she'd actually been pretty good from what Gajeel had gathered. She was really only one of the few people he'd ever managed to learn the name of. He only knew his direct neighbours' names because of Levy since she'd invited them over for dinner once when they'd first moved in, but other than that, he just didn't care.

But regardless of how little he cared, he didn't exactly hate making banana bread. Even if no one knew it was him who made it, he'd overheard a few people over the years go on about how it had tasted pretty damn amazing. But Gajeel already knew it tasted it amazing, because he'd been the one to make it. "Guess I've got some banana bread to make then."

* * *

With a final glance behind her to Blair, her all-black cat that had an awful habit of making her way into her neighbour's apartment whenever she had her back turned, to make sure that she was in fact still sitting on her lounge and licking her paws, Lucy swung the strap of her purse over her shoulder and pulled her front door open, ready to go to work for the day. It was as she turned to lock it did Lucy almost trip over something, and a yelp escaped her before as she stumbled and stopped herself from falling in the hall.

Looking down to her orange sunflower doormat beneath her feet (something the superintendent hated her having, but honestly, Lucy didn't give a shit at all. She was going to keep her flowery doormat, thank you very much!), she saw a dark purple box sitting in the middle of it with a pink ribbon around it, and a cardboard tag stuck on the lid with _'Welcome to the building'_ and then, _'P.S. Thank you_ ' written in block letters on it. Glancing suspiciously up and down the hall with the light blue walls, Lucy hesitantly crouched down to examine the box further.

 _Oh god. What if it's a bomb or something?_

Lucy reached down to pull at the ribbon carefully, then lifted up the lid painfully slowly, and peeked inside the box.

 _Okay. So it's not a bomb. I think. But…What is it?_

With that thought running through her head, Lucy rose to her feet once again and held the box in her hands with the lid beneath, and then stared down in confusion at what she judged as a loaf of banana bread in plastic wrap.

 _Why the hell is there banana bread outside my door? Oh god, is it poisoned? What if someone is trying to poison me and the welcome note is just a ruse! Did I kill off someone's favourite character in one of my fanfics and someone has managed to find out my identity? Oh god… Oh no… What have I done?_

She'd only been living there for a few months at most. Surely she couldn't have already made an enemy or something already? She only knew like four of her neighbours as it was, and one of them she'd known since she'd been ten so he didn't count. Surely she couldn't have pissed any of them off that quickly and drove any of them to actually poisoning her.

Her rampant thoughts trailed off when she found herself pulling the plastic wrap away from the loaf with one hand. Lucy could smell the bananas in it already, and _oh_ , it just looked so good…But it was probably poisoned.

 _Maybe not._

Her lips twisted and she stared intently down at the loaf. She'd already been running late for work as it was, but she didn't care right then. All Lucy had on her mind was the banana bread and just how it had gotten to be outside her door.

 _Surely it wouldn't hurt to just try a little piece…Right? Of course it wouldn't._

All worries about it being a bomb or a poisoned loaf were long gone as her fingers dug into the soft loaf to break off a corner, and she quickly shoved it into her mouth while letting the crumbs fall to the box. A moan resonated from her throat when it hit her tastebuds, and if anyone had been in the hall right then to witness her wanting to fall to her knees to worship the mysterious loaf of banana bread, she would not have cared in the slightest.

It was the best thing she had ever tasted in her entire life, and she couldn't help herself from taking another bite from it. Even if it was poisoned, which Lucy sure hoped it wasn't, she wouldn't have minded. She would die a very, very happy woman, having been able to taste something so delicious, so perfect.

Only catching a glimpse of her watch as she brought yet another small piece up to her mouth, she quickly dusted off her fingers on her coat and put the lid back on the box and turned to dash down the hall.

Whoever had left that banana bread on her doorstep was Lucy's new favourite person, and she was sure that if she ever managed to find out who it was (assuming it wasn't poisoned and she didn't stop breathing in the elevator, or choke on some more of it since she was already opening the box back up as she stepped in), she would be very willing to get down on her knees and beg them for some more.

She had no shame when it came to amazing banana bread.

* * *

Gajeel had only had time to get Lucy's – who he had met when Levy had invited her over for coffee just a few days earlier, and she'd even brought her apparent troublemaker of a cat with her since Levy had mentioned that they had two cats of their own – loaf of complimentary banana bread before he'd been called into the restaurant to cover someone else's shift, so he'd left Levy to take it out of the oven when it was ready and given her free rein of how it would be when it was to be dropped off on Lucy's doormat. He had, actually, made a second loaf for the person in 503…But it hadn't surprised him in the least to come home past midnight to find out Levy and Wendy had eaten it.

So he'd made another loaf two weeks later when he had another day off, and he'd managed to get it done early enough in the morning so his roommate and cousin wouldn't have been able to get their paws on it. Gajeel hadn't wrapped it up _neatly_ and put it in a pretty box like Levy had (though he had written the little note, because seriously, he hadn't heard a single thing about any of Levy's books or favourite characters since she'd met the woman in apartment 502, and it had been a fabulous time). Instead, he just wrapped it up in the plastic wrap as quickly as he could and stuck the usual _'Welcome to the building'_ card on the top of it, and had grabbed his jacket and headed for the elevator first thing that same morning.

He never made it known that it was him who made the banana bread. He would deliver it, sure, but he liked making people wonder. When Gajeel reached apartment 503, right next to Lucy's on the fifth floor, he'd been about to crouch down to drop it gently outside the white door when it opened suddenly, and he was found face to face with a man with blue-and-black hair, a leather messenger bag across his body, and a black cat with bright orange eyes in his arms.

Blinking slowly, startled by the raven-haired man outside his door, Bickslow looked down to what he was holding in his hands, and then back up. "Is that banana bread?" he asked as an eyebrow arched curiously. He didn't care why he was outside his door. He just wanted to know about the banana bread.

"Uh…Maybe," Gajeel mumbled as she shuffled awkwardly and stared at the peaceful feline in front of him. "Is that Lucy's cat?"

Bickslow looked down to Blair, who was in fact Lucy's cat, who sat peacefully in his arms. "Yes, but I'm debating keeping her."

"…Do I even want to ask why you have Lucy's cat at seven-thirty in the morning and why you're debating keeping her?"

"It's probably best you don't."

"Right…" Clearing his throat, he held out the loaf of banana bread that was still warm in his hand, and looked away awkward. Gajeel couldn't believe that his identity as the banana bread baker was being blown up. All that time… "Uh, well… This is for you, since my roommate pointed out that I never made you any when you first moved in, so…"

Bickslow's free hand took the loaf and tossed it up into the air to catch it again, and a wide grin spread on his face. _So this is the mysterious person who keeps leaving the banana bread._ Bickslow had heard about people in the building finding some just after they'd moved in, but he'd always wondered if he was ever going to get some himself. He figured the baker had just had an issue with baking things for guys or something, and it had honestly been a little disappointing because he was such a sucker for banana bread. "Oh, sweet! Thanks, man."

"Yeah…" Gajeel nodded, shoving his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket as he stepped out and let the man get out of his own apartment. "Well uh…Can you maybe just…Not mention that it's me who does the entire banana bread thing?"

"Dude, I don't even know your name. Who am I gonna tell?"

"It's Gajeel."

"Well, I'd hold out my hand if I wasn't holding this damn cat," Bickslow chuckled as he locked the door behind him and held Blair in both hands, lifting her up slightly as she meowed quietly. "And it's Bickslow. But don't worry, your secret is safe with me on one condition."

Gajeel narrowed his eyes at the man.

"You bring me some banana bread every week."

"Why?"

Bickslow shrugged as he stepped back in the hall towards Lucy's apartment, that playful smirk still on his face. "I like banana bread. It's up to you though. You make me banana bread, and I don't tell a single soul that you're the one who's been making this banana bread I've been hearing about so much."

Only scowling at the man from the corner of his vision, Gajeel rolled his eyes quickly and turned in the opposite direction. "Fine. Deal," he muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Bickslow to hear, who only laughed a little louder and began talking to Blair before knocking on Lucy's door. He'd rather make a loaf of banana bread every week than have everyone in the building find out that he was the mysterious baker. He liked the element of it, and he would very much like to keep his identity a secret.

It was bad enough Levy had told Lucy that he'd been the one to make the banana bread she was completely in love with – she'd even gone as far as getting on her knees and begging him to make her some more – but his secret identity was already crumbling. He couldn't let it happen anymore.

Oh no. That just wasn't going to happen. He would sooner die than have his annoying neighbours find out that he, Gajeel Redfox, tenant of apartment 603, was the baker of the banana bread that everyone loved.

* * *

 **A/Ns:** _In relation to the first chapter if you couldn't tell, it's set pretty soon after Lucy moves in, but it's closer to two years before the first chapter was set._


	3. The Cat Thief

**A/Ns:** _The dialogue and scenes in the italics are kind of flashbacks. I hope it makes sense._

 _ **Prompt:** I come home and find your cat in my sink after I get home from work._  
 _ **Characters:** Lucy, Bickslow_

* * *

 ** _THE CAT THIEF_**

* * *

The first time Bickslow ever came home in the afternoon to find a cat sitting in his kitchen sink, he only stood there and stared at it for a good ten minutes before doing anything.

He wasn't a cat person by any means, and to find someone else's cat in his apartment, it was just a _little_ frustrating. Being a pre-school teacher meant he was incredibly tolerant when it came to annoying little things, so he wasn't anywhere near as annoyed as someone else would've been if they'd come home to find a cat in their kitchen sink.

Bickslow had known it was his own fault though. He always left the window in his bathroom half-open and he never shut the door when he was out either, so he knew that was how the cat had gotten in and made itself comfortable in his kitchen. Still though, regardless of the fact he'd known it was his fault, Bickslow hadn't wanted a cat in his kitchen sink, so he'd only hesitantly gone and picked the all-black feline with the bright orange eyes up. It had been a miracle in his eyes that he hadn't been scratched or even bitten – it was a good kitty.

Thankfully, Bickslow had found the cat's owner. It turns out, it was his new neighbour. Bickslow had known someone had moved in just a few weeks before, someone Heartfilia, he knew, thanks to the plaque in the lobby, but he'd never actually met the person. Not until he'd knocked on the door to apartment 502, his guess as to who the cat's owner was since he knew no one else on the floor – apart from the person in 501, if anyone even lived there at all – had cats, and had been greeted by a slightly stressed blonde with a biro in her messy bun.

 _"Oh, there you are, Blair!" Lucy said as she saw her fur-baby in the man's arms. "Where in the world did you go?"_

 _"He was in my kitchen sink," Bickslow answered as he handed the woman her cat back._

 _"She," Lucy corrected._

 _"Sorry,_ _ **she**_ _, was in my kitchen sink."_

 _"I'm so sorry about that," Lucy apologised frantically as she held the black cat in her arms, stroking her fur as she mewled happily. "I realised I left my bedroom window open so I thought she'd gone down the fire escape or something. God, I was so worried about her! I thought she'd get hit by a car or something, and just… Just… Thank you for bringing her back!"_

 _"It's uh… It's fine, I guess," Bickslow mumbled as he scratched at the back of his head. "I'm not telling you how to be a pet owner or anything 'cause I don't have pets of my own, but, just try and keep a closer eye on her if you can. I don't really want to be coming home and finding her in my sink every day, you know?"_

 _"Of course, of course." Lucy nodded quickly as she stepped back. "I'm not entirely sure why she even left in the first place because she's never done that before and I've always had an awful habit of leaving windows open. But thank you again. And, I will try and keep her out of your kitchen sink."_

 _"That would be great, thanks."_

But when Bickslow had gotten home the day after returning Blair to the blonde next door, he was once again greeted by the cat sitting in his kitchen sink. And then it happened the day after that, and after that, and after that. Even on weekends, Bickslow would be sitting in his living room with his feet up on his coffee table with his laptop resting on his lap as he worked on some lesson plans for the week, and he'd hear a jingle and turn to see Blair padding across his floor and over to his lounge, just to climb up onto his coffee table and stare at him.

Because of his neighbour's more than strange cat, Bickslow got to go and see her owner, who he had learned was named Lucy, every single day of the week. Literally, every day, and it was probably the most he'd ever talked to anyone in that building in the six or so months he'd lived there. He knew Laxus and Freed on his other side because he'd run into them in the lobby or the hall a few times since they all worked similar hours. He knew the moron on the other side who set fire to his apartment too many times, and his cool and collected boyfriend, but no one else, really.

Bickslow just didn't really talk to that many people in short. No girlfriend, partner, or kids. Almost all of the teachers at the school he worked at were women and were at the very least a few years older than him, and of all the males that worked there, they all taught the older kids, whereas he taught the little ones. It wasn't weird. He loved his job, including occasionally coming home covered in paint or glitter or god knows what else.

But he talked to Lucy every day, because he was constantly having to return her cat. He still wasn't closing his bathroom window, and Lucy apparently wasn't closing her bedroom window, which only meant Blair was free to go between their apartments whenever she pleased.

But the more he saw Lucy, and the more he got to know about her from the short conversations they had, the more Bickslow realised he didn't exactly mind having to return Blair to her every day. Sure, it was getting a little creepy coming home to find those bright orange eyes staring at him from wherever she sat (mostly in his sink), but it was fun to talk to Lucy.

 _"Looking for this?" Bickslow grinned as he held out the black cat to the blonde._

 _"Oh my god, Blair! Stop sneaking into Bickslow's apartment, you silly thing. You keep making me worry about you."_

 _"She's fine," he said, shrugging. "It's weird, but it's fine. She's safe, I suppose."_

 _"True, but I wish I could leave my window open and not worry about her going off somewhere at all. I mean, I'm glad that I know that she's always in your apartment doing god knows what because I know she's at least somewhat safe there, but still…"_

 _"Just don't worry about it. She's probably just bored and it's why she's coming over to my apartment during the day."_

 _"I suppose," she sighed. Turning, she gently lowered Blair to the ground and tucked a stray section of hair behind her ear. "But anyway, I've got to finish this short story for the weekend paper and I'm only just doing my draft. I'll talk to you tomorrow when you drop Blair off again, yeah?"_

 _Nodding, Bickslow laughed, "Yeah, sounds about right. Enjoy your night, Lucy."_

 _It was as she slowly closed the door and Bickslow began to turn that he heard it, and he stopped in place._

 _"Now, where did I put that pen? Damn it. How do I keep losing pens so often?"_

 _Rolling his eyes, Bickslow quickly knocked on the white door once again, and smirked when he saw the blonde once again._

" _Yes?"_

 _Without saying a single word, Bickslow only reached up over the suddenly confused blonde, and he gently pulled the pink and white biro with the chewed cap from where it was sticking through her messy bun, and held it out in front of her. "Looking for this?" he asked once again._

" _Oh! Yes, thank you! God, you're a lifesaver right now."_

By the time Lucy had been living there for nearly three months, Bickslow had come to accept that his apartment wouldn't be empty when he got home in the afternoon, and he really didn't mind it all that much. It was still strange, but he'd taken to giving Blair a quick pat and saying hello to the happy feline whenever he got home, and he'd always wait until he had his bag unpacked for him to do his work and had sat down for a few minutes before getting up to take Blair back to her owner. He'd even started buying some cat food and leaving it next to a small bowl of water in his kitchen so he wasn't worried about her starving or anything, because he never knew just how much time he really spent in his apartment.

When it was the weekend and he was sitting back and just relaxing or working on things for his class during the week and he heard the unmistakable jingle of her collar, he didn't roll his eyes or groan anymore. Not even when she jumped up onto his lap or his computer so he couldn't type. She was most definitely strange, and the the longer Lucy lived there, the more Bickslow got used to Blair. He had to admit the cat had grown on him a little.

But when Lucy had been living there for closer to four months, Bickslow was realising just how strange Blair was.

It had been a Tuesday when it had happened; when the line had been crossed. He'd been showering in the morning like he usually did, and his window was still open like it usually was, but he hadn't exactly been alone in his bathroom, not like he'd thought, at least. Oh no. Because when he'd turned around, he'd only caught a glimpse of the damn cat sitting on the counter next to the sink and in front of the mirror, and staring at him. It was like the creature had been staring into his soul, and Bickslow had actually covered himself from the feline's eyes. Her bright orange eyes just looking directly at him and scaring the living hell out of him.

Not even caring that he was still dripping wet and only wearing a towel around his hips at that point, all Bickslow had done then was pick up the happy cat and march out into the hall and up to the door of apartment 502 to pound on the door with his fist.

When the door opened that morning, only revealing a very tired blonde, still in her pyjamas that were strangely adorable – bright pink cotton shorts, a slightly dishevelled camisole with cartoon stars and moons of various colours, tall rainbow socks with one sitting higher than the other and a sleep mask that Bickslow could see only said _'Miss Sexy'_ on it – all Bickslow had done was hold out _her_ cat with a scowl.

"Your cat is a perv," Bickslow said quickly.

Lucy blinked. "Excuse me?" she mumbled, not sure that she'd heard her neighbour correctly as she slowly pulled Blair into her arms. It was her day off, and the only reason she was awake was because some moron – granted, an incredibly _sexy_ moron – had been knocking on her door at seven o'clock in the morning.

"She was staring at me," he explained while narrowing his eyes at the cat who was still in fact staring at him. _Stupid pervert._ " _Whilst I was showering_."

"I don't exactly blame her…"

"Hey, eyes up here, sweetheart."

Lucy looked up suddenly when she realised Bickslow was snapping his fingers in front of her face. _Damn it. Why did he have to ruin my fun?_ And damn it, why had her cat seen more of her neighbour than she had? That just wasn't fair. "Uh… Right, yeah…"

"Anyway," Bickslow cleared his throat and tried looking away from the blonde when she turned around and dropped Blair to the ground. Seeing the word ' _fabulous'_ printed on the back of her shorts in block letters only had one thought running through his head then: that it was truly fabulous. But he wasn't going to dwell on that. Oh no. He might just happen to like her a little bit, or a lot… But he wasn't going to think about her shorts again. Not that _day_ , anyway. "Just… Try and keep Blair in your own apartment in the mornings at least. It's weird when she watches me shower."

Shrugging, Lucy stepped back from the door as a smirk tugged at her lips. "Would you prefer someone else watch you shower then?"

And when she only closed the door behind her, all Bickslow could do was stare at it in shock.

* * *

Lucy paced her apartment nervously as she kept glancing up to the clock. In the four, nearly five months she had been living there whilst Blair had made it part of her daily routine to sneak out through her bedroom window and into Bickslow's apartment through his bathroom window, Lucy had come to learn a few things.

One, of the neighbours she had met, some of them were insane – or they made really great banana bread, which she was so glad she was still able to get, even though her one date with the master banana bread baker hadn't worked out at all.

Two, she liked Bickslow. Just a bit too much, considering she knew nothing about him.

And three, Bickslow always managed to drop Blair off by five p.m. at the latest, assuming he was home (which she had come to learn he always was at night), and assuming she was also home (which, she mostly was, unless she was out drinking with Cana or Levy, which wasn't very often).

But it was getting close to six though, and Lucy was worrying. She could deal with Blair going over to Bickslow's during the day, because she knew that's where her cat would be. She was safe there and nothing really changed. The only difference was that she spent her day in someone else's apartment while Lucy was at work, rather than hers, and she knew that Bickslow didn't mind it all that much for whatever reason (assuming it wasn't seven o'clock in the morning and he didn't turn around in the shower to find Blair staring at him through the glass, which Lucy thought Bickslow thinking it was weird was still a bit strange).

Having had enough of the constant worrying, Lucy stopped her pacing and quickly turned for her door and went out into the hall and straight to Bickslow's door. The door had barely been opened before she was quickly saying, "Do you have Blair?"

Bickslow stared at the frazzled blonde he had come to like just a little bit too much for a second before turning slightly to look over his shoulder and to his living room. "Hmm, nope," he answered, looking back to her with a shrug. "Haven't seen her today. Is she not with you?"

Lucy shook her head, and she felt her heart drop into her stomach. If she wasn't with Bickslow, then who was she with? Blair was her baby, and she really didn't know what she'd do without her beloved pet. "No, she's not. I guess she's just somewhere else then…"

"She'll come back eventually," Bickslow said with a soft smile.

"Yeah, I suppose…" Sighing, she stepped back and looked up from the ground to nod her head. "Well, if you see her," she said dejectedly. "Can you let me know?"

"Of course."

And with Lucy going back to her own apartment, Bickslow only closed his own door gently behind himself and then turned to look at the cat that was sitting on his lounge. Still. Blair was always content in his apartment, and Bickslow was fine with her being there. It had been long enough that he just didn't really care anymore and he kind of liked the company, and it wasn't all bad when she curled up at his side and stayed there for a while before he took her back to Lucy.

He felt bad for lying to Lucy, but it had been all part of his plan to an extent. She'd get her cat back if she went on a date with him. At that point, Blair was basically his (or somehow, _theirs_ ), anyway, so in his head, it was a brilliant plan, but then again, he spent his days with people under the age of six so he was prone to being just a little creative and immature.

But seeing Lucy so obviously upset by Blair going missing (or so she thought) was only making Bickslow realise that it was a terrible idea. What kind of moron holds a girl's cat hostage to get a date out of her? Oh, _Bickslow_ was that kind of moron.

 _Idiot. Idiot. Idiot._

Within five minutes, Bickslow was rushing out his door and knocking on Lucy's door with Blair under his arm. Lucy's face lit up so much when she saw her beloved pet, and handing Blair over, Bickslow frantically tried to apologise even though Lucy had no idea what he'd done. "God, I am so, _so_ sorry," he said quickly.

Lucy looked up from where she was too busy showering kisses to the top of Blair's head. "Huh? What for?" _Why is he apologising?_ She was wanting to thank him for bringing her baby back!

"Because I was being stupid and Blair was in my apartment before an—"

"Wait, just then?"

Bickslow nodded, and he tried not to wince when her eyes slimmed and her expression hardened. God, she was scary when she looked like that, but Bickslow knew he deserved it. "Like I said, I'm so, so sorry. I just meant it as a joke, I promise!"

"So you lied to me and had _my_ cat the entire time you _had to know_ I was here worrying about her?"

"Yeah, and I know it was stupid. I do," Bickslow quickly went on, desperately trying to mend the situation that he'd made worse. "And I'm really sorry, Lucy."

 _Why do I like this guy again?_ The temptation to turn around and just slam the door in his face and call up Cana and invite her over to bitch about everything and anything and eat cookies and cream ice cream was far too strong. Lucy was just so mad at Bickslow right then. Who did he think he was, stealing her cat like that? If he'd said that he had Blair in his apartment when she'd asked him just before, she probably would have left it. She could share, even if Blair was _her_ cat and not Bickslow's (well… Blair didn't seem to know that, but whatever).

But no. He had lied to her face about it, and Lucy wanted to know why. She thought they were at the very least friends, but friends didn't lie or play jokes like that. "So why'd you do it?" Lucy asked softly.

"Uh… That's not really that important…"

"Tell me."

"Do I have to?"

"Yes, considering you basically stole my cuddle buddy and made me worry about her for no reason."

 _No. Now is not the time to be jealous of a cat being her cuddle buddy. No. Bad Bickslow._ Sighing as he ran a hand down his face, he quickly mumbled, "The plan was to say you could have your cat back if you went on a date with me." _There? Was that so hard? Yes. Yes, it was. God, I'm an idiot._

Lucy stared at him, unblinking, before she was back to scowling. Who in their right mind would ask someone out after holding their cat hostage? _God, this guy is insane._ But she still liked him, just not so much in that precise moment.

But still, if he'd asked her out like a normal person, she would have gladly agreed… And because of that, Lucy wasn't going to go out with him until he asked her like a normal person and kept her cat out of it. She couldn't exactly say no though. That was too mean, and if she said no, then he'd think that she didn't want to go on a date with him at all. So huffing in her annoyance, too busy trying to keep the heat off her cheeks and ears, Lucy tucked Blair under one arm and gripped the door handle with the other as she stepped back.

"You can ask me out when you're not holding my cat hostage."

* * *

 **A/Ns:** _Hopefully that wasn't too hard to follow. For clarification, most of it (like Bix and Lucy's first interaction) was set before Lucy meets Gajeel and Levy, but it goes past that._ _Yes, there's a bit of GaLu in this. There's also a bit of CoLu. Both of which will be explained at some point in this, and since these aren't really in order, I could get around to those chapter any time._

 _Also, yes... Blair is a perv, and so is Lucy a little bit.  
Make sure you pay attention to the chapter titles too... Once I have all of the characters in their little family introduced/Lucy's met them all or they've all had at least one chapter dedicated to them, there'll be a special chapter where Lucy is a little bit evil..._


	4. Not All Heroes Wear Capes

**A/Ns:** _These are honestly too much fun to write, and they're so easy and I'm able to get them done quickly. It helps that I've already decided what happens in like every single one of these chapters, I guess. Also, the chapter title below is the actual title. I couldn't fit the last part in the chapter title._

 _ **Prompt:** I heard constant coughing in your apartment it sounded like you were choking so I panicked and kicked down your door to come save you. Wait, you're not choking and just have a bad cold? Oh my god I'M sO SORrY. I'LL PAY FOR THE DOOR. I'LL ALSO MAKE YOU SOME SOUP._  
 _ **Characters:** Lucy, Laxus_

* * *

 ** _NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES - SOME WEAR COATS_**

* * *

Lucy rarely got sick, but when she did, she got _really_ sick.

She'd been in her new apartment for almost exactly a month when her first bout of the flu for that year struck her, and within a day of getting the sniffles and having a slight tickle in her throat, she was curled up on her lounge in as many layers and under as many blankets as possible, with only Blair to keep her company. It was honestly a mystery to Lucy as to why she was still with her at all, curled up on top of her and purring when she wanted her head scratched or just because she loved Lucy or whatever reason, because Lucy had quickly figured out in the month she'd been there that Blair spent her days in her neighbour's apartment rather than her own.

Even when Lucy was home from work or it was a weekend. The damn cat just seemed to like her neighbour for some reason.

It's not like Lucy didn't like Blair curling up next to her when she was sick, because she loved her feline friend. She was her cuddle buddy, forever and always. She didn't need a boyfriend to fill that role. Not when she had her cat… Sometimes, that is.

But when she was sick, she loved it all the more, because when she was sick, all she really wanted was someone to cuddle with, and Blair was that someone. She loved her kitty, and she liked to think her kitty loved her too.

For nearly a week, Lucy only went from her bedroom – dragging her Kylo Ren bedspread with her like a cape – to the lounge in front of her T.V., sleeping, drinking so much water she would have thought she was pregnant and had a foetus pressing on her bladder for the fun of it, and watching way too many shows and movies on Netflix and having amazing movie marathons, assuming she didn't fall asleep halfway through them.

Oh, and what felt like coughing up a lung. Or two. What did it matter if she coughed them up anyway? It wasn't like she needed them. Or at least her characters in her sci-fi stories didn't. They could live without vital organs and be perfectly fine. Lucy, however, could not, even though she almost wished she could, they were that congested and full of disgusting mucus she was considering performing her own double pneumonectomy (and apparently killing herself in the process, but whatever).

Her head hurt, her nose hurt and she'd gone through so many boxes of tissues she might as well be a spokesperson for Kleenex, and had forced so many cold and flu tablets and so much horrible tasting cough medicine down her raw throat that she was just debating getting someone to hit her over the head to make her sleep for the next two or three days so she wouldn't have to be mostly awake while her body worked on making her better.

Honestly, it had been doing a pretty fucking horrible job at it so far too. It was almost so bad she was considering seeing a doctor, but Lucy didn't do doctors. Oh no. She hated them. Hospitals, clinics… She couldn't stand them. She would only go see a doctor if it was absolutely necessary, and even if she'd already spent a week hating herself – and her, at that moment, annoying immune system – and having her only form of contact be with a cat who was barely there and a couple of sweet text messages from Bickslow asking if she was feeling better or if she wanted him to bring her anything (and that he was enjoying coming home to an empty apartment), she wasn't _that_ sick.

It was just the flu. Or a chest infection or something. Or some deadly virus that would turn her into a zombie. She'd be fine. She was always fine. She'd just sleep the rest of it off and continue doing what she'd been doing.

* * *

It was a Saturday morning when Laxus decided to try and be a hero.

His husband, Freed, had sent him out to get the groceries that morning since he had a chapter to finish editing for his boss, and even if Laxus almost never went grocery shopping by himself (only because he rarely knew what to buy), he'd put on his big boy pants and gone and done it. It helped that Freed said he'd believed in him to buy the the right things, and it also helped that Freed had given him an extra detailed list, including notes on what the various fruits and vegetables actually looked like so Laxus would be able to recognise them.

It had been easy, surprisingly, but he'd left the fruit and veg section with only one question: just what in the actual fuck was so good about kale? It just looked like broccoli and spinach or something had hate sex and accidentally made the world's ugliest and most unwanted baby. Laxus could only wonder just why Freed was so obsessed with it, and if he'd hated his husband's weird green smoothies before without trying them, he was most definitely _never_ going to try them now.

Not even if he was tied up, which he was used to.

Nope. He was never ingesting that leafy shit. Ever. Freed could have the kale all to himself.

Apart from questioning his husband's taste in food though, Laxus' shopping trip had been successful. All he had to do was get back to his apartment, put everything away, and then he could sit back and relax in front of the T.V., because it was a Saturday, and Saturdays were his lazy days. And Freed's, too, when he didn't have a chapter to finish editing because an author was late on getting one finished. Whatever. It happened. It wasn't that frustrating.

It was as he was making his way down the hall and towards his apartment at the end (unfortunately, opposite the _other_ gay couple of the floor, where Laxus was already sure one of them had literal ash for brains, and the other one just seemed to have no idea that going down to check the mail in just boxer briefs was really not acceptable) of the hall that Laxus heard something coming from apartment 502 as he walked past it. It wasn't exactly like the walls in that place were very thick, so everyone in that building learned to just avoid and ignore odd things they heard every now and then (it certainly didn't help that Laxus had impeccable hearing and he heard far too much), and that was what he tried to do when he heard the person inside 502 coughing.

But it honestly sounded really bad, and Laxus was beginning to worry about the poor woman (it sounded like a woman, so he was going with woman). What if she was having trouble breathing? Or what if she was choking on something? And hell, what if he heard about someone dying over the next few days and it was the woman in that apartment, having choked to death or something? Laxus wouldn't be able to live with himself if that happened, not if he'd had the opportunity to help her and maybe save her life.

Maybe it would be his good deed of the day?

And just like that, with his sense of heroism rushing in his veins alongside the surge of adrenaline, Laxus was dropping his grocery bags on the ground and quickly rushing back to the white door with the gold _502_ sitting just below the peephole in the centre of the door. Trying to see if it was unlocked once, Laxus cursed under his breath when the coughing only seemed to get worse from what he could tell, and he took a step back from the door. And, seeing no other way to get in, because whoever was choking on their tongue obviously wasn't exactly going to get up and unlock it to let him in, he _kicked_ the bloody door open.

It flew off the hinges completely, ripping them from the doorframe, and fell to the ground with the splinters with a loud thud.

 _"WHO THE FREAKING HELL ARE YOU?!"_

Laxus' eyes widened even more when he looked directly to where the voice had come from, just to see a terrified blonde sitting upright on a light blue sofa and surrounded by pillows, used tissues and a million boxes of them, and under a… _Is that a fucking Star Wars duvet? Wait… She's not coughing anymore._

"Wait so… You're not choking?" Laxus asked, blinking slowly as he looked between the blonde with the red nose and messy hair who was holding a cat with the most terrifying eyes he'd ever seen, and to the door lying in front of him.

"What? No!" Lucy shouted as best as she could manage. It really only came out as a croak, her throat was that sore, but she didn't care. She was far more interested in why the bloody hell there was a blond the size of the goddamn Hulk standing where her door _used_ to be. "I have the flu, you idiot! The only thing I'm choking on is my own goddamn mucus, and if you don't explain why the hell you're standing in my apartment before I call the cops, then _you'll_ be choking on my fist!"

"Oh my god. Oh… God. I'm so sorry." The flu? _The goddamn flu?!_ Oh, Laxus was in for a world of trouble now. He'd just broken down his neighbour's door for nothing. "I thought you were choking and couldn't breathe!" Laxus quickly tried to explain while thanking all his lucky stars that the woman who had just threatened to shove her fist down his throat wasn't doing just that. Or calling the police… Yet. "I thought you were dying or something and your door was locked so—"

"So you broke down my door?"

"You sounded like you were _dying_ , Blondie."

Lucy huffed and let Blair go run away, no doubt to go into Bickslow's apartment to see what he was up to, and folded her arms across her chest and kept staring at the blond man. She had to admit that it was just a little sweet. A complete stranger had worried about her and broken down her door to get to her and save her life, not that she'd needed it, of course. It was nice to know she had some nice neighbours, even if they went about it the wrong way.

Plus, the guy looked a little awkward, and it really did not suit him. All big and muscly under the fur coat, and the lightning shaped scar on his face only made him look like an absolute badass. It really didn't surprise Lucy that much that he'd actually managed to completely take her door off the hinges, even if it had scared the living hell out of her and her coughing fit had abruptly ended with some sort of scream.

But still… She wasn't happy. Or thankful. "But you still broke my door," Lucy shot back.

"Uh… Yeah…" Laxus looked down to the door again as his brows drew together, and he crouched down to wrap his hands around the edges to lift it up effortlessly. "I'll pay for this, and try and keep the super off your back because the guy is a total fucking asshole and I wouldn't want you getting kicked out of the building or anything because I'm an idiot."

Lucy smiled weakly, and half a laugh left her lips. "How kind of you, Thor."

He looked over his shoulder as he laid the door up against the wall, next to the doorframe. "Did you just call me _Thor_?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I don't know your name, you called me _Blondie_ , and you just broke my door. Plus, you're like the size of Thor, so get over it."

He arched an eyebrow at the woman on the lounge. Her voice was hoarse and croaky, which wasn't unexpected since she was sick and had been sounding like she'd been choking, but holy damn was she a sassy little thing, and Laxus was sure she'd be just a little feisty if she wasn't curled up under a mountain of blankets and down with the flu. "Just because I broke your door down, I'll let you have that one," he muttered. It was a horrible name, honestly. But only seeing the woman smirk, Laxus adjusted his long coat over his shoulders and stepped back through into the apartment building hall – he had groceries to put away and a replacement door to sort out. Looking over his shoulder, he said, "You know, you should really go see a doctor about that cough."

* * *

Lucy woke up late that afternoon to a knock on her door. Somehow, her blond neighbour she was calling Thor (even though she'd learned his name was Laxus the second time she'd seen him that day) had organised to get her door fixed that same day, and that, she was incredibly thankful for. Having an open door to her apartment all day had made her more than a little uncomfortable, and it was mostly because she couldn't nap like she wanted to. She only knew a few of her neighbours and they all lived on that floor (Natsu and Gray, but she'd known Natsu since she'd been a kid, Bickslow, the one her _cat_ had kind of adopted, and now Laxus), and she didn't feel safe enough to actually close her eyes and leave her living room.

Once someone had shown up with a brand new door and it had been installed where it belonged, Lucy had been free to nap, and that had made her very, very happy. Especially since she hadn't had to pay a single red cent for any of it, and she'd been able to just sit back on her lounge while drinking her orange juice and watch her new door get put in place while Laxus disposed of the one he'd broken.

But once she was woken up later that afternoon after having the nap she'd had to wait far too long to have, Lucy pulled herself up from her comfortable lounge with a groan, and wrapped her quilt from her bed around her shoulders and slowly padded over to her door, letting the ends drag on the ground.

She knew Blair had disappeared again at some point when she'd been asleep, so Lucy figured it was just Bickslow at her door dropping Blair back off. When she opening it though, it wasn't her blue-and-black haired friend. Instead, it was the Norse god with a plastic container in his hands.

She arched a brow, but a smile tugged at her lips. "What? You didn't break it down this time?" she teased the man.

"Funny," he muttered. In just one day, Laxus had realised Lucy was definitely someone whose bad side was one he did not ever want to be on, and he'd probably pity anyone who was on her bad side. But she was very forgiving, too, and Laxus was definitely glad for that. Or maybe it was just because she was sick and probably didn't have the energy to do anything but be a little snarky, but that was okay. "But no. I uh… Made you some soup."

"Soup?"

"Well, my husband did, actually," Laxus mumbled as he held out the container full of the freshly made and still hot chicken noodle soup. "After I mentioned that I broke down our new neighbour's door because I thought she was choking, he laughed at me, and then made me make soup as a way of apologising. But I totally fucked up since I can't cook things like that, so… _He_ made you soup. For me. For you."

If Lucy had the energy to laugh at the sheepish smile that he gave her right then, she would have. He was so big and honestly menacing, but he just seemed so goddamn adorable and cuddly. Reaching out and taking the warm container, she smiled up at the large blond before wrapping her Kylo Ren cover around her even tighter. "I appreciate it, Thor, and tell your husband I said thank you."

Laxus nodded. "I will," he said before glancing down the hall to the direction his own apartment was in. _God this is awkward._ "But uh, I guess I should go and let you get some rest since you're apparently refusing to go see a doctor…"

"Don't need to see one. I'm fine. It's just a little cold." _That I've had for a week…_

"Yeah, and I'm a fucking Norse god with a giant hammer."

"You are."

Laxus rolled his eyes. He _really_ needed to introduce her to Freed. They'd no doubt talk for hours about god knows how many things, and judging by the amount of books she had on her shelves and scrap pieces of paper lying around, Laxus was sure they'd get along great. "Sure I am," he muttered. "But seriously, I'm sorry for breaking your door and all. Next time I hear you choking, I'm just gonna ignore it and let you die, okay?"

She couldn't stop the peal of laughter slipping past her lips when she nodded. "That sounds like a great plan."

* * *

 **A/Ns:** _So, yeah. That's how Lucy met Laxus. Lucy's a bit weird (and a giant nerd) if you haven't guessed, and a lot of the characters in this are getting quite OOC, but it's a modern AU, and it's all just supposed to be fun._

 _I just want to point out something quickly. In the Gajeel and Bix chapters, I did kind of hint that they're not exactly the most sociable of people, and can tend to get a bit lonely at times. This is a running theme with every single person Lucy meets in her apartment building, and I just wanted to say that in case it's not really that obvious in some of the chapters. But anyway, it's not really a spoiler, I don't think, since we already know they all end up as a great big family a couple years after Lucy moves in. There's still a lot to go through. ;)_


	5. Bookworms, Unite!

**A/Ns:** _I've been sitting on this one for a little while, but now it's finally finished so I can get it posted. This one doesn't have a prompt. It just kind of fills in a few gaps, and if you couldn't guess from the title, this one is about how Lucy first meets Levy, which I did mention how it happens in Gajeel's banana bread chapter._

 _There'll be some more notes at the bottom. A bit of an explanation for parts of this and the story as a whole, updates, etc._

 _ **Characters:** Lucy, Levy, Gajeel, Bickslow_

* * *

 _ **BOOKWORMS, UNITE!**_

* * *

It had been a long day at work, and all Lucy wanted to do was get back to her apartment and curl up on the lounge with some ice cream and Blair (once Bickslow dropped her off, of course, because he'd been doing that around the same time every day), and just watch as many horrible shows on Netflix as she possibly could. She wasn't in the mood to write anything, or even do anything. She just wanted to relax.

She didn't want to work on her book, because she was on the verge of scrapping that draft completely because she just hated it. She didn't want to update any of her online works, regardless of how many reviews and private messages she'd had over the last few weeks with people demanding she update. People just didn't seem to be able to understand that she had a life and a job and writer's block was a thing, and honestly, it was incredibly hard to write romance and smut when she her life was severely lacking both of those. It didn't help that she'd only been living there for a few months at most, and for a little while, she hadn't had time to do anything, because she'd been busy moving and getting everything like her internet connected. And, to top it off, her job was more important, but she'd gotten her short little story submitted to the paper just that same afternoon and the editor had liked it, so she didn't have a deadline to worry about for another week. Even if her job was something as simple as writing the short stories for the Sunday paper, it paid her bills.

Just.

Pulling her white scarf away from her neck as she walked into the ground floor of the nine-storey apartment building, Lucy smiled politely to the blue-haired woman who had walked in just before her and held the glass doors open for her. "Thank you," Lucy said a little breathlessly. She really did not like the cold, and Lucy had quickly come to realise that her apartment building didn't exactly have the best heating. Though, she figured that it served her right for moving at the end of autumn, even though it was still borderline freezing when it was now spring.

She pulled her keys out of her handbag, and fumbled for the small key to her mailbox on the wall, with the blue-haired woman doing the same just next to her. Finally getting the small metal door open, Lucy pulled everything out and sighed as she began to sort through them all. _Bill, bill, another bill, junk mail…_ _Oh!_

She held up the paper-wrapped parcel while tucking the letters back in the cubby for a moment, and Lucy couldn't keep the smile off her face as she quickly tore at the packaging. She was far too excited to wait until she was back in her apartment to open it up and see just what book the online book club she was a part of had sent out that time. Seeing the title peeking through the torn paper, Lucy quickly exclaimed, her voice rising some, "Oh, yes! Yes, yes, yes!" Then, realising that she wasn't actually alone in her apartment and was in the lobby with a stranger, she turned to the woman next to her who was just looking to the book in her hands with a smile and an eyebrow raised. "Oh, I'm sorry!" Lucy tried to apologise for her sudden outburst. "I've just been wanting to read this book for so long and I was trying not to buy it in the hopes that my book club would send it out, and they did!"

Levy laughed a little nervously at the blonde. "It's okay. I get the same way." Glancing down to the paper-wrapped parcel in her own hands, then to the one in the blonde's, Levy smiled softly and added, "And at least I know that it's a good book this fortnight."

Lucy blinked at the woman, then down to her hands and saw the packaging, then back up with another wide grin. "Oh! We must be a part of the same book club," Lucy said excitedly, and the other woman nodded. Quickly, Lucy held out her hand to her. "I'm Lucy. It's a pleasure to meet you!" Ordinarily, Lucy wouldn't have done something like that, because she was far more comfortable keeping to herself.

It was why she was an author, actually. She could build up the characters she wanted and she wouldn't have to deal with actual people herself. She wasn't a very well known, author, though. Her first book that she'd had published just when she'd been twenty, had almost been a disaster and it would be a miracle to find it on any bookstore shelf those days. After that though, it had honestly taken Lucy a little while to start writing again, but she'd eventually gotten back into it, starting with some shorter stories that she posted online – some original, some homages to her favourite movies, shows, or books – and then eventually getting the opportunity to have particular works published in the paper. The deadlines were a little torturous, because sometimes it was hard to come up with a few good ideas a week, then write the drafts, then the final copies, then hope to have the editor for the paper like her ideas enough to publish them in the paper, but she dealt with it.

But she'd been in that apartment building for a few months now, and she still only knew a grand total of four people. She only knew Natsu, who lived across the hall with his partner, Gray, and she'd known Natsu for years. Laxus from down the hall, all because he'd broken down her door, and then Bickslow from next door because Blair seemed to like him more than she did her. Though, she didn't mind that. He was cute and he was fun to talk to, when they actually talked.

It was just that Lucy knew she needed to get out of her shell a little bit. She needed to stop being the tiny bit of an introvert she was and had always been, and she needed to actually meet new people, and maybe, just maybe, make some friends – gods, she needed some of those – and what better place to start than meeting her neighbours? Especially with someone that seemed to have at least one similar interest.

Levy graciously shook Lucy's hand as she tucked all of her mail under her arm. "It's nice to meet you too. I'm Levy," she said. It was only then that it occurred to Levy that she hadn't seen Lucy around until then, and with that in mind, she continued, "You must be new to the building, yes?"

Lucy nodded. "I moved in just a few months ago, at the end of November."

"Ah, that explains why I haven't seen you before."

"Yeah, I suppose," Lucy whispered. The elevator doors closed behind them as they got into it together, with Lucy pressing the button for the fifth floor, and Levy for the sixth. Meeting new people had always been a little hard to Lucy, and for Levy too, so even without realising it, both girls were quite nervous.

Gajeel was always telling Levy that she needed to go out and make some friends, and even though all she knew of the blonde standing next to her was her name and that she obviously liked to read, Levy seemed certain they'd become friends. And that made Levy incredibly happy, and Levy was sure it would make Gajeel happy. If she had someone else to rave and rant to about her books, then Gajeel would surely enjoy that. She loved the guy, because he was her best friend and she'd known him for far too long, but she knew that he hated hearing about her books. But he put up with it, because that's what he did.

As the elevator reached the third floor, Levy turned to the blonde and began, "So I know it's—"

"Did you maybe—"

Both women stopped mid-sentence when they both decided to talk at the exact same time, and stared at each other for just a moment before they both burst into a fit of giggles. "Sorry. You first," Levy said gently.

Blushing, right as the elevator passed the fourth floor, Lucy said, "I was going to ask if you maybe wanted to come over for coffee one day and we could talk about the book? Or anything? Just, if you wanted to, of course. If not, then—"

"I'd love to!" Levy replied quickly. Oh, sitting down with someone and being able to actually talk about literature? It sounded so perfect and marvellous.

"Oh, good! Well, uh… I'm home pretty much most days, and nights, so… You could really just come over whenever you want to. I'll probably be there," Lucy said quickly as the elevator opened up to the fifth floor. She felt just a little embarrassed to admit that she really didn't do much with her life. She only had to go into the newspaper's offices a couple days a week at most, just to meet with the editors there and get the drafts in so they could read over them.

Levy nodded, and she held the doors open with her hand so they wouldn't close. "What apartment are you in?"

"Oh! 502!" Lucy giggled nervously. "Sorry. But I'll see you… Whenever, okay? I need to go get my cat back from my neighbour."

Stepping back, Levy only shook her head as the blonde quickly turned and rushed down the hall, disappearing behind the corner of one apartment before the metal doors closed. She didn't exactly know why Lucy's cat was with her neighbour, but Levy was sure she'd be able to find out about it one day, assuming she remembered to ask. For now, though, she found herself just a little excited to tell Gajeel that she made a friend.

He'd be proud of her.

* * *

Gajeel got home late one night after the restaurant had closed just to find a trio of giggling girls sitting on the lounge – Levy, unsurprisingly, since she lived in the room next to Gajeel's; Wendy, also not surprisingly since she lived in the room next to Levy; and, a blonde that Gajeel had never seen before.

Hearing the front door close, Levy looked up and over her shoulder to where her confused roommate was slowly walking towards them, his black chef jacket folded over one arm. "Oh, Gajeel!" Levy giggled excitedly.

He mentally rolled his eyes when he heard the slight slur to her voice, then looked to the coffee table in front of the overly large lounge area just to see three wine bottles, one of them empty, and the other two well on their way to being so. _That explains the slurring._ "You're up late, Shrimp," he said, just a little cautiously at that when he turned his attention to the youngest of the blue-haired women on the lounge, and then back to Levy quickly when he saw his younger cousin sipping on a glass of white wine. "You let Wendy drink?!"

"Oh, calm down." Levy waived her roommate's sudden change in demeanour, his eyes slimmed yet full of fear at the same time. The man got far too protective of Wendy sometimes, but she didn't actually blame him all that much. "She's sixteen. She'll be fine," she insisted, and Wendy nodded quickly from where she was tucked into the corner of the lounge, clutching her nearly empty wine glass. "She's only had a few glasses anyway."

"That's not the point!" Gajeel walked around the lounge quickly just to pull the glass from her hands and take it over to the kitchen to pour what was left of it down the drain. "Grandeeny will kill me if she finds out. Shit. So will Dad. Fuck. They're gonna kill me."

"No they won't."

Gajeel was sure they would though. Even if Wendy's mother happened to live on the opposite side of the country, she was still terrifying. She was so terrifying that even Gajeel had grown up being scared of her, and that was saying something since he was scared of practically nothing. How Wendy hadn't turned out differently, Gajeel had never found out. But the only reason Wendy was living with him was because the school she wanted to go to was in that town, and Metalicana had decided it would be great for Gajeel to get a new roommate for a couple years while Wendy finished up her secondary education. She was under his care and she was his responsibility, and by under no circumstances was she to do anything illegal.

Like drinking.

Oh no. No drinking. Never.

He raised a slightly burned finger to the swaying girl as she picked herself up from the lounge, apparently intent on heading to bed, and he quickly said, "You better not tell your mother about this."

Wendy only nodded, and quickly grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge before carrying herself down the wall, with Carla following behind her.

With that, Gajeel turned his attention back to the other two women on the lounge, and slowly walked back over to them. "Who's the blondie?" he asked, nodding towards the clearly intoxicated woman on the lounge.

"Oh, yeah!" Levy sat up suddenly as she placed her wine glass on the table. "This is Lucy," she explained. "She's the one that I met the other day and told you to make the banana bread for."

Lucy's brown eyes lit up. "You're the one who leaves the welcome banana bread?!" She'd been curious about that, having received the banana bread just the day before and only a few days after meeting Levy at all. She never once expected it to be the pierced man in front of her though, even though it was her first time meeting him.

Gajeel lifted a hand to rub at his forehead and he groaned into his palm as he slowly dragged it down his face. It was gone… Just like that. His secret; his persona as the master banana bread baker. Gone. In an instant. All because his roommate had a big mouth when she was drunk. _That_ was why Gajeel never let _Levy_ drink, even though he'd never really had to worry about her spilling any secrets to anyone, because until right then, Gajeel hadn't been able to remember a time where she had really had anyone to spill any secrets to.

But with Lucy…

Gajeel knew that it was going to be a bit of a problem, especially if they became close, which he assumed they would, considering they were sitting on his lounge and drinking at two o'clock in the morning basically just a week after meeting each other. He knew it wasn't the first time they'd talked though. Levy had said she was going over to her new friend's apartment to talk about the book they'd received that fortnight just a couple of days earlier, but that was all Gajeel had known then. No name, not what she looked like ( _couldn't she have mentioned she was hot as hell, or something?!_ ), or even anything about her, other than that she was relatively new to the building and they were in the same book club.

But just seeing Lucy right then, Gajeel had a feeling that the two together would be a nightmare for him in terms of his deepest and darkest secrets that Levy happened to know. But thankfully, he only really had the one, and that was that he baked the banana bread that everyone went on about. She was only one person though. Surely it wasn't the end of the world if Lucy knew, right? "Yeah, that's me," he grumbled.

"Oh, it was so nice!" Lucy beamed, and she sat up on her knees on the lounge to lean over the back. "I know you just met me, but is there any chance I can convince you to make me some more? _Pleeeease?_ " Gods, Lucy would be willing to actually get on her knees and beg the man to make her some more, it had been that good. She'd managed to devour the entire loaf of it in the few short hours she'd been in her tiny little cubicle at the newspaper she sort of worked for, and she had only one regret from that: that she hadn't saved any to eat later.

"Uh…"

"I'll get him to make some more for you," Levy answered for Gajeel, who at that point, was really just standing stunned and trying to figure out what was going on, as well as still trying to figure out why there were drunk women in his apartment. "But this is Gajeel, by the way. Sorry about that."

Lucy thrust out a hand so quickly that Gajeel didn't even see it. _At least this one seems to hold her liquor better than Levy._ "Pleasure to meet you, Mister Gajeel, the banana bread man!"

He rolled his eyes, and reluctantly shook her hand. Turning his attention back to Levy with an eyebrow raised and his arms folded again, he asked, "So just why are you two drunk on my lounge at two a.m.?"

"Because I invited her over for coffee after dinner so we could talk about some other books and watch a movie," Levy replied innocently.

"Yeah… That sure looks like coffee."

Lucy shook her head defensively. "Nope! We did actually drink coffee." She pointed to the two mugs sitting on coasters behind the wine glasses. "But then we moved onto wine halfway through the movie."

"Right."

"This is Blair, by the way."

Gajeel blinked, then blinked again when Lucy suddenly decided to hold up a black cat that he hadn't even known was in the room. "…Blair?"

Lucy nodded again quickly, and Blair just stared at him, legs dangling and giving him just a single meow. Now, Gajeel had nothing against cats, because he had one of his own, and Wendy had one too. But this one… This one gave him the chills, because she ( _or maybe it's a he?)_ had the most unnatural orange eyes he had ever seen.

And honestly, just why the actual fuck was there another goddamn cat in his apartment? That's what Gajeel wanted to know.

But Levy, the saint she mostly was, decided to read his thoughts and answer for him: "I mentioned to Lucy the other day that we have two of our own cats, and I thought it would be a good idea for Lucy to bring her since it allows her to actually keep an eye on her instead of leaving her in Lucy's apartment."

"Bickslow's apartment, technically," Lucy giggled quietly. No doubt Blair would have found her way into her neighbour's apartment since she'd been out most of the night, and Lucy was sure that Bickslow wouldn't have appreciated _cat_ -sitting her precious fur-baby.

"Uh, okay… But, hate to break this little party up and all," Gajeel began slowly, plucking the glasses from their hands and the table. The two women whined, obviously not liking having their alcohol taken away, but Gajeel didn't care. "It's getting really late, and Shrimp, you need to be up for work in four hours."

"I'll call in sick," she complained.

"Like they'd buy it. And you," He turned to Lucy then who was only stroking Blair's tail. "I'm sure you have something to do at some point tomorrow."

Lucy shook her head and flashed a brilliant grin. "Nope!"

Gajeel sighed. "Well, it's late, and Levy here needs to sleep, and so do I. If you leave now, I'll bring you some more banana bread tomorrow afternoon." She seemed like a nice girl – a really nice girl, actually, and she was even pretty, too – and Gajeel didn't exactly want to be an ass to her, so he was trying to be nice. They didn't get many visitors, so he wasn't very good at kicking people out.

But it was an offer Lucy couldn't refuse though, and quickly (though swaying on her feet slightly), she was getting up from the lounge and picking up Blair again, and slipping her feet into the beige flats that were just in front of where she'd been curled up on the lounge. "That, my new friend, is a brilliant offer, and I will take it."

"I'm so glad."

"Mm-hmm!" She turned to Levy then before she could reach the door and she said, "Come by tomorrow afternoon if you have time, yeah?"

"You know I will!" Levy replied, and Lucy positively shone with excitement that even Gajeel was amazed just how close they were already. And even if he was still happy that Levy had a friend that shared her interests, he was relieved to hear the sound of the door closing behind Lucy, and Levy making her way down to her bedroom to finally go to bed.

Thought it wasn't the worst thing in the world to be coming home to in the middle of the night, Gajeel sure hoped that finding those two (or even three, if they got Wendy involved) drunk on the lounge on a weeknight wouldn't be a recurring event.

* * *

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" Gajeel hissed in Levy's ear as she shrugged on a coat in front of the mirror in her bedroom.

"Going out so you two can get to know each other," she answered innocently, but it really just made Gajeel seethe.

He loved Levy, truly, but sometimes, she drove him up the wall. Right then was one of those times. It was one of his rare nights off from work, so he'd really planned on doing nothing but sitting in front of the T.V. and doing nothing for the next several hours, but Levy had informed him that he'd needed to cook regardless, because they had a guest for dinner that night. Gajeel had been just about ready to grab a jacket and just walk out, because he didn't do the entire dinner party thing. He could cook – brilliantly, at that – but he never did for guests. Or, at least, he rarely did.

That had been the case until he found out it was Lucy coming over for dinner that night though. He had only seen her a handful of times over the last couple of weeks since meeting her, but Gajeel had come to learn that she was actually a pretty interesting person. She was a little odd and nerdy in an adorable way, and he didn't mind coming home in the afternoon or late at night to see Levy and Lucy talking. If Lucy was coming over for dinner, then yeah, Gajeel would stay, and he would cook. He wouldn't do anything outlandishly fancy. He'd just make enough of whatever it was he'd planned for them all to have for dinner that night for an extra person.

The only problem with that was that Levy was leaving before it was even dished up, and Wendy was staying at a friend's house that night, which left just Gajeel and Lucy. And right then, while Gajeel was trying to hate his best friend in the world for setting him up on a goddamn date, Lucy was sitting in the kitchen, no doubt awkwardly.

He would've been too, if it was reversed.

But Gajeel didn't want to go on a date with Lucy. Well, he didn't think he did, anyway. Sure, she was cute, and he could probably hold a somewhat decent conversation with her if he tried hard enough and they managed to find a common ground, but he didn't want to go on a date with her.

Gajeel could only curse himself for mentioning how he thought her new friend was pretty cute. If he hadn't opened his mouth, he wouldn't be in that situation. It was really all his fault, and now Lucy had been roped into Levy's insanity too. It sucked. Honestly.

So when it was just them in the kitchen with Levy having just left, it was awkward, and so, _so_ uncomfortable. There wasn't enough alcohol in the world to make them not notice it, not unless they were drinking vodka and not wine. And really, Gajeel didn't think it was that bad to be taking shots. Drinking straight from the bottle though…

No. It wasn't that bad. They'd be able to get through the night somehow. They were adults, after all, and they were just friends. Two friends having dinner together. It was fine.

That mentality didn't stop either of them from picking at their food for a good few moments once it was dished up and they were sitting at the table though. Lucy though, realising that it was getting so awkward that not even she could handle it, decided to break the silence, and she looked up with a smile after taking the first bite of the simple chicken alfredo in front of them. "This is really nice, Gajeel," she said. "Special recipe or something? I think it might be the best I've tasted in a long time."

He smiled in appreciation. He was used to receiving compliments on his food. "Nothin' special," he admitted. "Just your basic alfredo. Fettuccine, cream, a bit of parmesan, some herbs and spices and a bit of bacon tossed in."

"It must be the bacon then. I don't think I've ever tried it with bacon before, but it's definitely good."

…And then it was back to an uncomfortable silence. And that was how their night went, basically. They'd talk for a little bit about something once one of them got too uncomfortable, and then there'd be a few moments of silence before it just repeated itself again. They went from the food, to their new mutual hatred for Levy for thinking it was a good idea to try and set them up on a date, to Lucy's job and her writing, and to Gajeel's job and how he got into cooking. They talked about anything they could to fill the time, because Lucy knew it would be rude to leave. Besides, the food was pretty damn amazing, even if it was just a pasta, a simple tossed garden salad, and some nice wine. It was a nice way to spend the night, even if it wasn't how Lucy had planned on spending it.

If she had to be perfectly honestly, she'd been planning on going over to see Bickslow since it was a Friday and she knew he'd be home – he was as boring as she was, apparently. It didn't help that she liked the guy, even if he kept stealing her cat, not that he ever intended to do it. Blair had just adopted him for some strange reason, and Lucy was truly hoping that Bickslow just didn't come home to find Blair in apartment one day and just go, _'screw it_ ,' and decide to adopt _her_. Blair was her fur-baby and no one was allowed to adopt her.

Her phone started ringing from where she'd left it on the kitchen counter then, and she was pulled from her slightly strange thoughts of wondering just what Bickslow was up to right then (surely it had to be better than her date that she knew Gajeel hated as much as she did).

"Answer it," Gajeel mumbled.

"Are you sure?" she asked, and he nodded. Getting up from her chair, Lucy went over to the kitchen counter to pick up her phone, and only rolled her eyes when she saw Bickslow's caller I.D. on the screen. _Speak of the devil._ She answered it, and lifted her phone to her ear as she slowly turned to head down the hall for a little bit of privacy in the open room. "Hey, what's up?"

"Hey, I'm just wondering when you'll be home?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," Lucy answered. "Why do you ask?"

"I'm just uh… Wondering if you wanted me to let Blair stay here tonight or something if you'll be home late," Bickslow mumbled. "You know, 'cause I don't really mind all that much I guess, and I wouldn't want her to just wander around on her own, just in case she doesn't go back to your apartment on her own. But I just wanted to ask since she's your cat, after all."

Lucy sighed. Of course Blair had gone over to Bickslow's while she'd been out again. She took the phone away from her ear just to look to the time at the top of the screen, then brought it back to her ear. "I'll um, I'll come get her in a bit, okay?"

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I'll see you soon. I've gotta go now though," Lucy said quietly.

He nodded. "Okay. See you soon, I guess."

Walking back out of the hall after hanging up, she saw Gajeel beginning to clean up their plates, with both of them having finished their dinner not that long ago. "Heading home?" Gajeel asked as he looked up from the sink.

Lucy nodded and she smiled apologetically. "Yeah, sorry," she muttered. She felt bad for leaving, even though she'd been there for a couple of hours. They hadn't done much other than eat and talk a little bit and get to know a bit about the other, but even if she felt guilty about leaving, Lucy knew there wasn't much else they'd be able to do. If she stayed, her night was bound to end on an even lower note than it already was, and she didn't want that. "I need to go relieve my neighbour of my cat, as weird as it sounds."

Gajeel raised an eyebrow. "That's Bickslow, yeah?"

"You know him?"

"Met him a few days ago. What's with the cat situation, anyway?"

She sighed and shook her head, and picked up her phone and keys. "It's best you don't ask." It wasn't that hard to explain that her cat just probably liked her neighbour better than her, but it was weird, so she wasn't even going to try and explain it. One day, maybe, but not then. With Gajeel following her to the door, even though it was in the same overly large living space, she turned once again and bit the inside of her cheek, before offering her hand out to him suddenly. "Okay, so," she began, a little awkwardly because she really didn't know if she should just leave it or not, but her lack of social skills was telling her to just go with it. "I just want to make sure we're on the same page here, since obviously this _date_ was what neither of us wanted. Or at least, I certainly didn't, no offence or anything."

"None taken," he snickered.

"Oh, good… Good. But, I had a nice time, I suppose. Since I got to know you a little better and I'm honestly not that great at talking to people and all…" _Oh god, Lucy. Shut up. I don't need to tell him my life story._ Ignoring the searing heat that crossed her cheeks and up onto her ears, Lucy quickly continued, "But I just wanted to make it clear, just in case it wasn't, that we're just… Friends. Nothing more, and I don't think anything less…"

Gajeel quickly reached out to clasp her small hand within his dry and chapped one – perks of his profession – and he gave her his signature smirk. "Friends," he repeated, and Lucy smiled softly at that. Nothing more, nothing less, no matter what Levy wanted them to be. They just weren't going to work, and that was more than fine for Gajeel.

* * *

A knock on his door had Bickslow pausing the episode he'd been watching and getting up from his lounge, disturbing Blair who had been resting comfortably on his lap while he had his feet on the coffee table.

He knew it was Lucy who was at the door, since he'd called her only ten minutes earlier. And honestly, just who the hell else was going to visit him at nine p.m. on a Friday night? Literally no one. But he preferred it that way. So pulling the door open, he really wasn't surprised to see Lucy, and he instantly held Blair out to her so she could gently pull her strange cat into her arms. "Enjoy your night?" he asked, crossing his arms across his chest and leaning against the doorframe.

"It wasn't the best, but it wasn't the worst," Lucy muttered. She forced a small smile as she looked back up. "What about you? I hope Blair didn't ruin your plans for tonight."

"What plans?"

"No plans still sounds a lot more appealing that getting set up on a date with a friend," she laughed quietly.

Bickslow blinked, and he straightened up slightly as he tried not to frown too much. "You were on a date?" Lucy nodded, and all Bickslow felt was guilt… Right next to the jealousy. "Tell me I didn't just ruin your date," he mumbled. Regardless of the fact that he liked her and he'd been planning on asking her on a date himself (and using Blair to do so), he'd have felt horrible if he really did ruin her night.

"It's fine. You kind of saved me from it, actually since it was going terribly. We're so much better off staying as friends."

"O-Oh."

She smiled, and stepped back from he door. She was sure she'd seen just a hint of relief wash over him after saying that, and that was what she needed to see. But it was still getting late for her, and she wanted to get back to her apartment. "But I best be off," she said quietly. "Thanks for watching Blair, as usual."

"I really don't think I have a choice in it anymore," Bickslow chuckled.

Lucy shrugged. "Still." And saying goodnight, she turned away as he closed the door and went back to her own apartment just next to his, and fished the keys out of her back pocket to unlock her door. Though she was tired, all Lucy wanted to do for the rest of the night was curl up in bed with another good book and read until the words were so blurry she couldn't even make them out. That was how she'd wanted to spend her Friday night all along, and so if the majority of her night hadn't been all that great, the least Lucy could do was make sure it ended on a high note.

* * *

 **A/Ns:** _So yeah, first off, I need to explain the timeline for this, just in case anyone was a bit lost._

 _Lucy and Levy have known each other for close to a month by the time Levy decides to set them up on a date, and by the time that date happens, Bix and Lucy do kind of like each other. And obviously, Bix knowing about Lucy's date (though not knowing at the time that it was with his friend the banana bread baker) is what leads him to actually decide to temporarily keep Blair to ask her out. Also, remember that Gajeel didn't give Bix his banana bread until two weeks after Lucy got hers, which I did kind of mention. The Lucy and Gajeel date is a few days after Gajeel and Bix meet, and since he met Blair when he met Lucy, that's how he knew that it was Lucy's cat Bix had that morning._

 _Sorry if that isn't making sense. I just wanted to try and make things a little clearer since, again, these aren't written in any particular order. It's a little chaotic while Lucy is getting to know everyone, but I'll try and make the timeline as clear as I possibly can. If it needs to be explained, I'll do it like this. If anyone else is still confused, just message me and I'll explain it._


	6. The Ghost Next Door

**A/Ns:** _Okay. I'm still putting off my uni stuff. Someone tell me to stop doing that. But anyway, have another chapter because I procrastinate too much!_

 **Prompt:** _I work at home and I haven't left my house in a while and you think I'm dead in my house._  
 **Characters:** _Lucy, Bickslow, Midnight_

* * *

 _ **THE GHOST NEXT DOOR**_

* * *

Bickslow opened his eyes when he heard a crash coming from the apartment next door. Blinking in the darkness, he looked around the quiet room as he pushed himself up slightly. It was, as expected, still the same room he'd been in when he'd gone to sleep, as well as the other two times he'd woken up from hearing a strange noise. Blair was, for whatever reason, still curled up between his legs on top of the Kylo Ren bedspread he was lying on his stomach under, and the very naked blonde that was basically his girlfriend but he still wasn't quite sure if they were _official_ official so he wasn't sure if he was her boyfriend, was still next to him.

He was in Lucy's bedroom still, because it was a Saturday ( _or was it officially a Sunday since it was well after midnight?)_ , and Saturday was one of the only days that they both had off, so it was really the only time they'd been able to have proper dates since they had started dating. Which admittedly, hadn't been that long. Three, four weeks tops. But that didn't stop them from having sleepovers every weekend. No sir. That was really great though. For both of them.

Sleepovers were fun.

But the fact that Bickslow was in Lucy's bed wasn't what was keeping him awake right then, because he did quite like her bed, even if he wasn't exactly as big a Kylo Ren fan as Lucy was. He was really just confused as all hell about the noises he'd been hearing every now and then for the last few hours.

The main reason behind Bickslow's confusion was that they had to be coming from the apartment next to Lucy's, but the problem was that just didn't make all that much sense. Bickslow's apartment, for starters, was practically a mirror to Lucy's own apartment, even though she had the second bedroom and Bickslow didn't. Their bedrooms were actually separated by a wall that really wasn't all that thick. He could Lucy going about in the bedroom in the mornings and nights, and when she showers and he'd been in his own bathroom, he'd also had the pleasure of getting to hear her sing some horrible anime songs (her current favourite was some French one about a ladybug and a cat, or something like that). She was as strange as her cat sometimes.

But the apartment on the other side of Lucy…

Well, Bickslow had lived in that building for just a couple months shy of a year, and he had never once seen anyone enter or leave apartment 501. He'd never even seen anyone check the mail down in the lobby, either, or seen anything get delivered to them. Bickslow wasn't even sure anyone lived in that apartment, and until that night, he'd been sure of that fact.

But now, Bickslow wasn't so sure that the apartment closest to the elevator was vacant, because that had to be where the noises were coming from. Someone had to live there. Or, it was haunted. Which was probably likely. It wouldn't surprise Bickslow if the apartment was inhabited by a ghost. The building wasn't exactly one of the fanciest in the city, and it certainly wasn't the newest, but it had had quite a few remodels done over the last couple of decades alone. There was probably a murderous ghost living in there from the twenties or something.

That's just what it had to be.

* * *

"Hey, Lucy?"

Lucy looked over her shoulder towards the blue-and-black haired man with the wicked bedhead on her lounge, before turning back to the two plates of scrambled eggs and toast she was dishing up in front of her. "Yeah?"

"Have you seen the person that lives in the apartment next to yours?" Bickslow asked.

So maybe, there was a chance that it wasn't a ghost, even though Bickslow was, at that point, totally convinced that it was. But Lucy, his sort-of girlfriend (that he really hoped _was_ his girlfriend, because he really, _really_ liked her, and he only made a mental note to actually find a way to bring up just what they were at some point in the near future) seemed to know practically every person on that floor, and then a few on other floors. Bickslow had even had the pleasure of meeting some them, and as long as he'd been living there, Bickslow hadn't even learned the names of any of his neighbours. If someone did in fact live in 501, Lucy was bound to know them. Hell, she was probably kind of friends with them too.

Bickslow had quickly realised that she was just the kind of person that was able to quickly make a stranger a friend, even though she was just a little shy and just as socially awkward as he was sometimes. That, he had realised on one of their dates, actually. Their third, to be precise, which had been the weekend before, where he'd planned on taking her to Kurogane of all places. Turns out, she wasn't all that good with big crowds, and that suited Bickslow perfectly. They'd left the bar before their table was even ready, and ended up ordering take-out in her apartment. Now that, was a date.

But as shy as she was, Lucy was great at making friends. It really wouldn't have surprised him if one of her newfound friends in the building just happened to be whoever had to live in the apartment next door – human or ghost.

Lucy's lips pulled up into a smirk as she carried the two plates over to her lounge, and then handed one to Bickslow before sitting down next to him and placing a throw pillow on her lap. "Yup. He's sitting on my lounge and eating breakfast with me. He's quite cute too, if I had to be perfectly honest," she giggled.

Bickslow rolled his eyes. "I meant on the other side, you nerd," he chuckled, and gently shoved her knee. "But thank you. I think I'm quite cute too. I guess you're kinda pretty if I squint."

She slapped his arm, and it only made Blair fall off the back of the lounge somehow in the process when her laughter got too loud and she disturbed her fur-baby. "Hey!"

"Or if I'm drunk," Bickslow added teasingly as he tried to wriggle away from her pointed fingers that she was jabbing at him. "I'm sure you'd be pretty hot if I was drunk. But if I'm sober and I squint, you're not that bad. You know, maybe if you did yourself up a bit an—"

"You are the worst boyfriend ever."

"Boyfriend?" Bickslow repeated.

Her face quickly flushed and Bickslow only smiled at the unflattering shade of red she had become. Lucy thought things were going pretty well with their relationship so far, and that had nothing to do with the fact that her cat had adopted _him_ , not the other way around. But they'd never talked about whether they were serious or anything like that. Lucy sure as hell hoped he wasn't with anyone else – certainly not sleeping with them, anyway – but still, she wasn't exactly sure of where they stood.

Quickly, as she rather unflatteringly wolfed down a piece of buttered toast, something that only made Bickslow laugh even more while staring at her in amazement and awe, Lucy managed to choke out, "W-Well, I mean I… A-And you… We…" She blinked, and then stopped to reach for her glass of tropical juice to take a large gulp while facing away from the grinning man beside her. _Just change the subject._ "You mean in 501, yes?" she asked instead.

Bickslow rolled his eyes at the sudden change of topic, but shrugged as she picked up a forkful of the scrambled eggs. "Yeah. That's the one," he mumbled as he took a bite. "Lived here for nearly a year, and I've never seen anyone come or go in all the time I've lived here. So either someone does live there and they're more antisocial than both of us combined, or a ghost lives a there."

"A ghost?"

"A ghost. I kept hearing things last night, so yeah. I'm pretty sure your neighbour is a ghost. That's the only explanation for the odd noises."

Lucy scoffed, and just about choked on her eggs. "Bix, are you telling me you believe in ghosts? Maybe werewolves and vampires too?"

"I'm becoming convinced of their existence," Bickslow answered. Lucy raised an eyebrow at him, and even if he was somewhat serious, he was finding it hard to keep a straight face. "I have this one kid in my class who comes in every week with a new ghost story. Not gonna lie, the only reason I added story time on Monday morning was so that I could have a reason to listen to his stories and I wasn't having to ask him all the time and feel like a giant dork."

"So you believe in ghosts because of a four year old?"

"Hey, you would too if you heard his stories. I'm pretty sure his house is haunted."

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. Lucy knew that Bickslow spent his days with four year olds and that he had shown to be just a little eccentric at times, but _ghosts_? She'd heard the sounds coming from the apartment next door since she'd moved in, but if she had to be perfectly honest, she couldn't really remember hearing anything over the last few weeks.

Bickslow had apparently heard something just last night, but Lucy hadn't. So either she'd just gotten used to hearing the odd _bang_ or _crash_ in the middle of the night, or… Whoever had lived there when she'd moved in had died.

They were the only logical reasons. Her neighbour was most definitely not a ghost. A corpse, perhaps, but not a ghost. "I'm sure I would, Bix. But I'm telling you, my neighbour is not a ghost," Lucy insisted, taking another sip of her juice.

"They might be."

"No."

"But have you met them?" Bickslow pressed.

"Well, no," Lucy answered, and as Bickslow opened his mouth again, most likely just to insist that her neighbour was a ghost, she added, "But they're not a ghost. A corpse, maybe, because I haven't heard anything for a few weeks."

It was Bickslow's turn to raise an eyebrow, and he did so as he lifted his plate so Blair wasn't able to swipe his breakfast from it. "So it can be a corpse, but not a ghost? I think you've been binge watching too much _Supernatural_ again, Lucy."

She had been, and it was her third time doing so, but that wasn't the point. "Irrelevant." She shook her head. "But what are you doing later today?"

"Writing up lesson plans for the week. Why do you ask?"

Lucy smirked deviously as she rested her chin in her palm with her elbow on the back of the lounge. "After breakfast, I'll go and see if anyone lives in 501. And, if I'm right and they're alive _or_ an actual corpse, you have to spend the rest of the day with me," Lucy said. She didn't mind if Bickslow had his lesson plans or other work things to do. She had another draft to work on that would need to be rewritten and finished for Friday, and she needed to work on some other story ideas. She could probably actually bounce those off of him, so it worked out.

Or at least it did in her head. Plus, spending a lazy day with her sort-of boyfriend would be nice.

Bickslow groaned as he tipped his head back, and sighed heavily. "Do I have to?" he complained. It wasn't that he had any issues with spending the day with her. He just liked teasing her.

"Yes. You do," Lucy insisted. "But if _you're_ right and no one lives there, or it's an actual ghost…"

"Then you have to spend the rest of the day in _my_ apartment, and… We get drunk in the middle of the day, make-out a lot, and have a _Game of Thrones_ marathon."

"Deal."

* * *

Midnight was, and never had been, nor will he ever be, a morning person. He just wasn't a day person, or even an afternoon person, either. He just preferred the night.

To Midnight, the days were meant for sleeping, and the nights were meant for working. Hell, that was the entire reason his name was what it is. One of his old college friends had thought it a great idea to give him the nickname of Midnight, since he'd mostly been asleep for all of his classes. His college roommates hadn't exactly liked him much, since he'd always been going to bed the time they woke up, and just having breakfast the time everyone else had dinner.

It didn't help that after college he'd worked a lot of night shifts, so it had really just become a habit of having his days and nights reversed.

But those days, it was just a whole lot easier for Midnight to get all of his work done at night. It was peaceful then, and when he needed peace and quiet to get his work completed, it was perfect.

He was always courteous of his neighbours, too. The walls weren't very thick, and he knew that his neighbours were asleep, so he always tried to keep the noise down. Weekends were a bit difficult, though. People stayed up later on Friday and Saturday night (he would know, because he'd heard his new neighbour and her apparent new boyfriend more than once over the last couple of weeks, and it had only made him get out his wireless headphones so he wasn't having to listen to what was quite possibly the dorkiest dirty talk ever), but people were also home during the day instead of being at work, so it was a little harder for Midnight to sleep during the day. It was bearable, though.

Sometimes, though, when he was too busy staring at his screen and trying to get the pen strokes to turn out exactly as he wanted, Midnight would blindly reach out for his cup of coffee on the edge of the desk, and just end up knocking it off. With the amount of mugs and glasses or even bowls he'd broken that way, he was honestly considering investing in some plastic and paper dishware. They'd less make noise when he dropped them in the middle of the night, and it would make cleaning up a whole lot easier too.

But aside from the odd occasion where he dropped something in the middle of the night and make a loud noise, everything was peaceful. He'd wake up in the evening, get himself some coffee, and scroll through his favourite news sites while having something to eat. Then it was a shower, then emails, and then parking himself in front of Photoshop and Netflix until sunrise. At which point, he would finally go to bed and sleep for the rest of the day.

That day, though, Midnight had had to stay up later than usual. Getting an email the day before he had planned on getting a piece finished and sent off to his client on the deadline they had set, and seeing that they suddenly wanted a lot of it to be changed… Yeah, Midnight had had a lot more coffee than usual that night. _'I hope it won't be too much of an inconvenience.'_ Oh, not at all! Midnight was a miracle worker. But it was exactly why he charged so much for his work – he was good at what he did, and when people tended to screw him around, he could deal with it calmly.

He'd got it finished at a little past nine in the morning though, and it had been emailed off to his jerk of a client's company a little after that. All Midnight had wanted to do was sleep, and so after getting everything finished and all of his dishes from the night done, he'd finally gone and done just that.

And he'd been so close to actually falling asleep, and then he heard a knock on his door.

Midnight hated when people visited him. He didn't get many visitors – he'd be lucky if he got one a fortnight, because he almost never ordered anything online so he didn't get any deliveries, and he got all of his bills delivered to his email so he could pay them all online – but when he did, they are all during the day. And the daytime was his precious sleep time.

Now, Midnight could just ignore the person knocking on his door, but he'd come to learn that people would just keep knocking, and it would make going back to sleep all the more difficult.

So with a groan, Midnight kicked his blankets back, pushed his panda sleep mask up, and pulled himself out of bed, just to storm out of his room and over to his front door on the other side of his apartment.

He pulled it open quickly and stared at the blonde outside his door. "What do you want?" he sighed

Lucy blinked at the more than unimpressed look he gave her. Well, whoever her neighbour was, he most definitely was not a ghost or a corpse. But seeing his plain black pants with the red cotton shirt, and his tousled black and white hair with the panda sleep mask sitting on the top of his head, Lucy quickly realised she had just woken the man up, despite it being close to ten o'clock.

Smiling brightly instead, Lucy held out her hand to the obviously tired and grumpy man. "I just wanted to introduce myself since we're neighbours and all," she said, and Midnight reluctantly grasped her soft hand to lightly shake it. "I'm Lucy."

Midnight wasn't exactly that fond of getting to know his neighbours. He was lucky to know one or two of them, but that was only because he'd been living there for the last two years. But with Lucy, it wasn't exactly like he had a choice. He couldn't exactly close his door on her, could he? Well, he could, but he wasn't going to. He wasn't an asshole like Cobra was, who he had unfortunately had the pleasure of rooming with in college for all of two months before they'd pissed each other off so much that Cobra had decided to move into that apartment building to get away from the dorms. They'd both been less than pleased to find out that they were now sort of neighbours after Midnight had moved in, but they still avoided each other the best to their ability, of course, and with their opposing schedules, it was quite easy.

"Uh… Macbeth," he mumbled. "I usually go by Midnight though."

"Midnight?" _What an interesting name._ But his name only seemed to remind Lucy of how she'd been hearing noises in the middle of the night since she'd moved in, and judging that she seemed to have just woken him up, Lucy reasoned that he had to be a night owl of some description. "I didn't wake you though, did I?" she asked, feeling a little guilty for disturbing her neighbour's sleep. "I'm sorry if I did."

 _Yes, you did._ Midnight shook his head though. "It's fine. I was just going to bed so I was still awake," he said quietly. He could have told her that she did wake him up, but he had decided against it. Lucy seemed like a decent person – unlike Cobra – and he didn't exactly want to be known as the resident unsociable asshole of the floor or build. Resident unsociable person, yes, but asshole, no. Cobra was the asshole of the building.

"Oh. So you work nights?"

He nodded. "I get more work done. It's quieter."

"So that would explain why I keep hearing the odd bump in the night," Lucy laughed. "Not a ghost, just you going about your day… Er, night."

Midnight raised an eyebrow, and stared at Lucy. "…Ghost?"

"Oh, uh… It's just something my uh… Friend said," she laughed again before clearing her throat awkwardly, then said, "But since you must sleep during the day, just let me know if you ever want me to be a little quieter when I'm home or something. I'm just in 502. I wouldn't want to be the reason you're kept awake or anything."

Now, Midnight realised that he could probably make some comment about how she tended to get a bit loud at _night_ when her friend was over… But that was just bound to embarrass the girl, and he didn't want to do that. He figured that she didn't exactly want to know that, yes, he had heard her say _'talk nerdy to me'_ just a little too loud more than once. Instead, he only smiled a little devilishly and said, "I'll be sure to let you know. And I'll try and keep my noise to a minimum at night, too."

"You're okay," she giggled. And, doing a quick once-over of the tired man again, taking special note of the adorable panda sleep mask, she smiled and said, "But I best be off so you can get back to sleep. It was nice to meet you, Midnight."

"You too, Lucy," he mumbled and forced a tired smile. Internally, he was only rejoicing that he was going to be able to go back to bed. "Have a, uh… Nice day."

"Enjoy your sleep." As the door closed, Lucy was already turning and heading back down the quiet hall to her own apartment. Her neighbour wasn't a ghost or a corpse ( _he's essentially a baby panda!)_ which meant she was right, and that meant Bickslow had to spend the day with her. She felt bad about waking Midnight up though, so she was probably going to have to drag Bickslow out so she could buy something that would make up for her odd visit, as well as hopefully be useful or be something he liked, which would prove to be difficult since she knew nothing about him. But still, she had to admit that she was pretty excited to prove his strange ghost theory wrong too, so when she opened the door to her own apartment, she did so with a smug grin.

But when she went to actually say something, she stopped, and only stared.

"I'm guessing this looks pretty strange," Bickslow mumbled from where he was lying on the lounge, a slice of banana bread in his mouth with Blair sitting on his chest and eating from the other side of the same slice.

"Uh…" Lucy was truly at a loss of words for what she was witnessing. She knew Blair liked – correction, _loved_ – Bickslow, and she also really liked banana bread… But that… That was like a nightmarish version of _Lady and the Tramp_ involving her sort-of boyfriend and her cat, and banana bread instead of spaghetti.

Strange just didn't do it justice. But seeing the more than embarrassed and confused look on his face only told Lucy that Blair had probably decided that Bickslow's banana bread was going to be shared. Only walking backwards with her hand on the doorknob, Lucy slowly and awkwardly said, "I'm uh… I'm just going to close this for a second, and hope that when I come back in, I'm not seeing… Whatever the hell is going on here."

Bickslow nodded, and swallowed the last bit of banana bread that hadn't been touched by the insane feline, and then gave the rest to her after sitting up and dusting the crumbs from his t-shirt. "That sounds like a good idea."

* * *

 **A/Ns:** _This chapter was supposed to be about half the length, but when I was writing it, it just ended up being more BixLu than anything... Because they're just giant nerds and I couldn't help myself. I promise not every chapter where they're actually together isn't going to be like this._

 _Also... I don't have an explanation for this. The Bix and Blair thing too... I just... Don't know. And I really wasn't sure how to do Midnight's part either, so that's why it's short. It does what it needs to do though, and just assume that Lucy makes a habit of visiting Midnight sometimes and giving him random gifts that she thinks he could use (...like earplugs, and acrylic cups with spiral straws because she's weird like that)._


	7. The Wi-Fi Thief

_I've been trying to get this one finished for a while, and I finally did, so woo!_

 _ **Prompt** : YOU'RE THE ASSHOLE WHO'S BEEN USING MY WIFI._  
 _ **Characters** : Lucy, Sting, Rogue (and all the kitties). _

* * *

**_THE WI-FI THIEF_**

* * *

Lucy had been living in her apartment building for near on six months when she noticed that she was going through far more of her allocated downloads on her internet plan than she even thought possible. It wasn't like she did much to chew through so much data. She barely left her house, sure, because she only had to go into the newspaper's offices a few times a week and the rest of the time she was curled up in her pyjamas on her lounge and being incredibly anti-social and watching something strange on Netflix or writing. She didn't even go on Facebook and play any of those crazy addicting games.

Well, she didn't anymore, though there was the stray occasion where she wondered if any of her crops had survived.

But even then, Lucy still didn't use her internet much. She spent most of her time writing, and even then, she did most of it by hand and her laptop was only used to do the final versions that the newspaper would get sent to publish every weekend. Netflix didn't use that much of her downloads, yet for the last three months, she'd apparently been using more than half of what she was allocated to use each month.

When she stared at her usage for the last month, having just paid the bill the day before, Lucy only came to a single conclusion: someone was hijacking her Wi-Fi.

Sure, it wasn't exactly the worst thing to happen. It was paid for regardless, so at least someone was using it. It was just from the moral standpoint, it was really fucking wrong, and Lucy didn't like it one bit.

She assumed it was one of her neighbours using it, because the range on her modem wasn't all that large so they'd have to be close by. So Lucy's first guess was actually Natsu. He lived just down the hall, after all, and it was a very Natsu thing to do to steal her Wi-Fi. But Gray would have told him off for doing that to his best childhood friend. Besides, he probably didn't even know how to hack her internet. The guy could barely even remember his own Wi-Fi's password, let alone remember to take his house keys with him so he could get back into his apartment (on more than one occasion she'd spent the afternoon with Natsu and waited for his boyfriend to get home so he could actually get into his own apartment), so how was he supposed to figure out what _her_ Wi-Fi password was?

It just couldn't have been Natsu or Gray.

She doubted it was Laxus or his husband, whoever he was. They didn't seem like the type of people to do something like that. Or at least Laxus didn't, anyway.

She didn't think it was Midnight, either, who she'd only met a couple of weeks earlier and only spoken to a few times since then. She figured he was the type to avoid any type of interaction with other humans, and that included stealing their Wi-Fi. That kind of thing would just end up creating conflict, and Lucy guessed he wanted to avoid that as much as possible.

And the only other person on her floor was Bickslow. Lucy highly doubted it was Bickslow who was using her Wi-Fi without telling her. The guy was her boyfriend (sort of. It still hadn't been determined, even though they'd been dating for around a month and a half by that point), so there was no way he was stupid enough to do something like that. Besides, there was no way in hell he could have figured out her password, either.

So that only left people on other floors. The only other people in the building she knew were Gajeel, Levy, and Wendy, and they all lived above her, but it couldn't have been them, either.

 _Maybe it's another ghost-corpse-thing. No, no. It can't be. It has to be a person._ She knew that. It had to be someone in her building, and they had to be actually breathing and classified as a living human being. Now the only problem was that Lucy had to find out just who that person was, and she had no idea how she was going to do that.

She stared at the blinking light on her modem with her arms crossed and Blair circling her feet (it was a miracle she wasn't already over at Bickslow's apartment since he'd left for work a couple of hours earlier). She'd turned the Wi-Fi off on her phone, her T.V. was actually unplugged, her laptop was turned off and in her bag and ready for her to leave for work, so there was nothing in her apartment that was using the internet at all.

Yet it was showing that _someone_ was using it.

She'd yet to figure out who that _someone_ was though, of course. She'd still spoken to Natsu and Gray about it just a few days earlier, just to make sure it wasn't either of them using it, and when she'd told Bickslow who'd ended up staying over the night before, he'd only laughed at her and told her she was slightly delusional. No one was stealing her Wi-Fi. For that, she'd only ended up putting her clothes back on and made sure that all they did was actually sleep. And cuddle a little too, because that was nice, just not when Blair made a point of hogging all of the attention.

But she still wasn't delusional, because someone was using her Wi-Fi _right then._ She was almost tempted to send a series of messages to her sort-of boyfriend that said 'I told you so' in as many different ways as possible with a picture of her flashing modem that was most definitely in use, but that would be inappropriate because she knew he was busy teaching the little adorable children that told him crazy ghost stories right then.

So she didn't do that. Instead, she just acted like the somewhat mature adult she was, and only pulled the cable out from the back of the modem and turned it off. "There!" She dusted off her hands (of what, she wondered), then looked down to Blair with a self-satisfied smirk. "Now no-one can use it."

Blair only meowed at her. Lucy liked to think it was her way of saying, 'Yes, go girl! You show 'em who's boss!' but really, it was probably just, 'When are you leaving so I can find my way into the cupboards and eat all of the banana bread and then go and visit your not-boyfriend because I love him more than I love you?' Honestly, if the guy wanted a cat so badly, he could go out and buy one. Blair was hers.

Well, sometimes. She almost felt like they were divorced parents sharing custody of a stupid kid. But that was just insane.

Still though, she was feeling a little accomplished as she left her apartment that morning. Maybe whoever was using her Wi-Fi would get the message and stop using what _she_ paid for.

* * *

It was a Wednesday night and Lucy was desperately trying to sleep, but her upstairs neighbours were making it impossible for her to do so. It was three in the morning, yet the hyperactive children that lived in the apartment directly above hers seemed to be unaware of that fact.

She turned to her fur-baby after reaching out and turning on the light, and sighed as Blair stretched out on the pillow next to her – the pillow that Bickslow had been using when he stayed over, of course – and yawned. Not only was Lucy going without sleep because of her idiotic neighbours, but her precious cat was, too. She reached out to scratch her feline's ears, and softly said, "I know, baby. I know the idiots upstairs are making it difficult to sleep."

It was times like that, where Blair turned her head to nuzzle Lucy's palm before stretching out to reach her cheek, that Lucy really did like having a pet. It made living alone much easier, because there was always going to be someone at home that was somewhat excited to see her. Well, not so much those days, now that Blair had adopted Bickslow and made him her human, too. But most of the time.

Blair was still _her_ fur-baby, not Bickslow's, even if Lucy was pretty much convinced she really did love her neighbour more than her.

She left Blair to curl up on the pillow again as she pulled herself out of her warm and cosy bed, then carried herself out to her kitchen to get a glass of water.

 _"No, no, no, damn it!"_

Lucy's eyes flicked up towards the ceiling as she heard the man from upstairs shout.

 _"That bastard shot me!"_ he whined. _"Take that, asshole!"_

When she heard what sounded like an explosion travel through the ceiling, and then some maniacal laughter, Lucy quickly came to the conclusion that he must just be playing some sort of game. She'd never gotten into the whole gaming world, and she'd never even owned any type of console, so she had no idea what game her upstairs neighbour was even playing. Although, from what she heard from the blaring T.V., Lucy suspected that it was probably at least somewhat similar to what Bickslow and Gajeel apparently played. She'd gone over to Bickslow's one evening after having to stay a little later at the newspaper's offices to make a few changes to her story to make the editor happy, only to find the man sitting on his lounge with Blair curled up on his lap, a controller in his hands, and playing some random game that allowed him to walk around the online world with a goddamn missile launcher and cause havoc.

Turns out, it was the same game that Gajeel was obsessed with, and somehow the two had formed some kind of alliance in the game and had too much fun picking on the teenagers that played it by shooting them and blowing them up. Constantly. Honestly, for a guy who taught four-year-olds and was sometimes a bit of a bigger nerd than she was, he seemed to have far too much fun playing horribly violent games.

Not that she minded much, of course. She'd already figured out Bickslow was a bit strange, anyway, and she did like it.

But getting back to her annoying upstairs neighbours and ignoring how she was sure she just heard Bickslow's strange laugh from next door.

She only decided that she was going to have to go and see them in the morning, because when sound unfortunately travelled too well in that apartment building, it was just a little rude of them to be up at three in the morning making so much noise. It was only when she was reaching to flick the light switch for her kitchen that she noticed the flashing lights on her modem, and she stopped, and only narrowed her eyes suspiciously at her ceiling.

It was three o'clock in the goddamn morning, she was trying to sleep so all of her gadgets and computers and internet-using objects were turned off (even her phone was actually off, for crying out loud, just because she had wanted to enjoy her sleep-in and not be disturbed by anyone for anything), yet _someone_ was using it again. Lucy had a feeling she'd figured out just who that someone was, though, so doing the only thing she knew that would confirm her suspicions, she reached for the cord once again and pulled it out.

 _"Oh… Oh no… No, no, no, no, no!"_

She had a triumphant smirk on her face as she heard her upstairs neighbour begin to freak out.

 _"Damn it! Rogue! Their internet cut out again and now I'm dead!"_

 _You're damn right it cut out, because I turned it off!_ Honestly, Lucy only thought the guy deserved to have died in whatever game he was playing right then. How could he think he could get away with using something that wasn't rightfully his? Lucy just had no idea.

What she did know, though, was that even if he stayed up until sunrise, whining and complaining about her shutting her internet off, she would enjoy it, even if it meant getting no sleep. She couldn't wait until the morning where she could go and accuse him of using her Wi-Fi.

* * *

It was nearly eleven a.m. when Lucy was knocking on the door to the apartment directly above hers. It was opened after she heard the same brat from the previous night yelling something to what she assumed to be his roommate (or live-in boyfriend, because she was almost convinced half of her neighbours in the building were actually gay, not that she really cared), and then she was smiling politely at the man in front of her with the black hair that covered half of his face before it was tied back in a bun, a Batman mug in his hand, and was in some kind of kimono.

"Hi!" Lucy said brightly as the man just stared at her, looking more than a little tired. "I'm Lucy."

"Rogue," he replied quietly, although why he was even introducing himself to the blonde woman, he had absolutely no idea. He just wanted to go back to sleep, honestly.

"Oi, Rogue! Who is it?" his roommate and unfortunate best friend for life, Sting, shouted from where he was sitting on the middle of the living room floor right in front of the flat-screen T.V. "Is it the delivery guy?"

Rogue rolled his eyes and dragged a hand down his face. If he didn't unfortunately share a birthday with the man, he would seriously be questioning how old Sting actually was, because if it was one thing Rogue was certain of, it was that his twin brother did most definitely not act his age. And he never had for that matter. He was just a little bit of an embarrassment, too, but Rogue had long since learned there was no escaping it.

"No, it's not," Rogue answered over his shoulder before turning back to Lucy. Yeah, she was most definitely not there to deliver anything, not unless it was another restraining order for Sting because he'd managed to get drunk and do something stupid again. But if she wasn't there to deliver anything, then what was she there for? "Anyway," he sighed. "What can I be of assistance for?"

"Oh, nothing really," Lucy said with another smile. "I just thought I'd come introduce myself since you're the assholes that have been stealing my Wi-Fi." There'd just been no point of not just cutting to the chase, after all.

Rogue froze and stared at the woman in front of him. Her smile from before had only turned a little too polite, and Rogue couldn't help but find it and her terrifying. He'd told Sting not to start using their neighbour's Wi-Fi, but his brother just had not listened to him (and granted, it hadn't been hat surprising that he hadn't, but still), even when he'd warned Sting that their neighbour would eventually find out and he'd get in trouble for it.

It had all started when Sting had broken their router when it had dropped out in a middle of a mission and he'd kinda thrown his controller at it, so of course, they'd had to replace it, but they hadn't been able to get one delivered for three days. Then Sting had realised that someone in their apartment building didn't have a password on their Wi-Fi (or they had, but it had literally just been a space so it didn't really count), and being so desperate to get back into his game and get some much needed revenge on one ' _IronRedfox'_ and another ' _SeithLord'_ (honestly, was it supposed to be some kind of joke since 'SithLord' was taken?), he'd started using his neighbour's Wi-Fi.

It had only meant to be temporary. That was what Sting had told Rogue, anyway, but then he'd had two nights of high-speed internet, and it hadn't dropped out once. There was no way Sting could walk away from that. His own internet was shit, but his neighbours… It was golden.

So… He'd kept using it, even when their new router had arrived and been set up and Rogue had told him that it worked a lot better than their old one did. Sting had become otherwise convinced that the owner of the Wi-Fi he'd been stealing for the last month just didn't care.

But she did care; she cared very much. And Rogue honestly didn't even feel sorry for Sting right then. He'd kind of been waiting for this day because sometimes, his brother really needed to be put in this place, and Rogue was so sure Lucy was about to do it.

Nodding, he only grimaced and stepped back from the door to let her in, and pointed to his childish twenty-year-old twin brother sitting on the floor in his bright blue Cookie Monster boxers and obnoxiously yellow shirt that was covered in tiny adorable penguins, and staring at the T.V. screen right in front of him as he shot what looked to be a white laser beam at someone, and blew them (and what looked to be a building) up. "Right," Rogue said. "That's the asshole you're actually looking for, then." It was most definitely not him using the Wi-Fi – it was Sting and it was _only_ Sting.

* * *

It took two weeks for the two blondes to come to some sort of agreement regarding the Wi-Fi, and unfortunately, Rogue had been stuck in the middle of it the entire time. But honestly, as long as he had his coffee, he was fine, and he'd just left the two to deal with their issues because he really hadn't wanted to get involved.

The day Lucy had first come over had only ended with her chasing Sting around the apartment and throwing pillows at him. Rogue had given her free rein to do whatever she wanted to do to his brother, because fair was fair – he'd been using her internet for the past month. Sting had called her psychotic, Lucy hadn't denied it, and from Sting yelling at her about how it was free for all since she hadn't put a password on it (Lucy had been sure she had, but apparently not), to Lucy saying it was besides the point (because really, it was), it had then somehow ended with Lucy realising that the brothers had two very adorable kitties.

And that had only ended with the two blondes sitting on the floor and playing with Lector and eventually Frosch once he'd wiggled out of Rogue's arms. Honestly, at that point, Rogue had only been able to just stare at them as his eye twitched, because he'd just been so confused how they'd gone from arguing and then giggling in the space of two minutes.

And so when Lucy had left that day, Sting had promised not to use her Wi-Fi, though the next morning, he'd started using it all over again. He was an asshole like that, and Lucy had yet to put a password on it so he'd started thinking that Lucy really didn't mind all that much.

She still did, of course, but she'd just been so swamped with writing and work and trying to make time for Bickslow (which she hadn't) that she hadn't had the time to care about the Wi-Fi thief from upstairs. Besides, even if she did mind Sting using it, she'd started coming around to the idea of just letting him go, because as long as he didn't use it all up each month, it didn't really affect her in any way.

So that was how she got to be standing in Sting and Rogue's apartment on a Friday evening two weeks later with an offer for the two.

"So?" Sting asked as he kept flicking through Netflix and and mostly ignoring the blonde that was standing right next to the television. "What's this offer of yours?"

Lucy sighed as Rogue tried incredibly hard not to grab a pillow and suffocate himself – his brother was just so dim sometimes that he wondered how he was even related to him. Lucy only looked back to the screen just behind her before looking back to the uninterested though still slightly hyper blond in front of her. "Alright, here's my offer," she said.

"Uh-huh."

"I can deal with you continuing to use _my_ Wi-Fi," Lucy began slowly, "Because you really don't seem to be using it that much and between us both, we're still not using up the full allowance…"

"Ooh! Sweet!" Sting cheered before elbowing his brother. "Told you Lucy doesn't mind!"

"She hasn't said the rest of it yet," Rogue mumbled.

"Oh. Really?"

"No, I haven't," Lucy cut in. She could really understand Rogue's frustration with him and she'd only known him for two weeks. It wouldn't surprise Lucy if Rogue lived with his twin brother just because their parents had wanted the blond to have a permanent babysitter to make sure he didn't get himself into trouble. He wasn't young by any means, sure, but Lucy still couldn't help but already see him as a bit of a baby, and when she was only four years older than him, she did kind of see him as being the perfect little brother.

It was almost like how she saw Natsu, even though he was a year older than her. It didn't help that she was already seeing the similarities between Sting and Natsu. _God, I'd hate to see what happens if they ever meet each other._

"So like I said, I can deal with you continuing to use the Wi-Fi, and you won't have to pay the bill because I'm a kind soul," Lucy continued. It didn't help her bill really wasn't all that much anyway. "But, once we both go over the limit for a month, then… I might have to increase the limit and depending on how much that is, I might ask you to pay _some_ of it…"

Sting nodded quickly. "Deal." That was easy, honestly. Those were terms he liked, because he really only used the internet for two things: his Xbox, and Netflix. And really, they didn't use that much data most of the time, and the only reason he loved Lucy's internet so much was that despite her living on the floor below, it was still a whole lot faster than his own was.

And, yeah… If she was going to let him use it without paying for it, then all the better, because without a job (that was what Rogue was for), he didn't exactly have that much money to play with. If they were using Lucy's, himself and Rogue could probably get away with reducing their own data plan since Rogue was the only one using it at that point, and reducing it would lower the cost and that would probably keep his brother very happy, and that was something Sting was always trying to do.

Honestly, the guy just needed to live a little and put a little something else in his coffee for once… Like whisky, maybe.

"Also…" Lucy began again. "Since I am letting you use it without paying for it at all, I think the least you could do is… I don't know, pay my Netflix account or something." It's not like it really cost that much, and it was a whole lot better than having Sting pay half of her internet bill which she really felt would be completely fair.

But no. She was being nice, because she was a nice person and sometimes it was the downfall of her, but that was still okay most of the time.

"Pay for your Netflix?" Sting repeated, and Lucy nodded. That was something he could most definitely do. Or really, it was something Rogue could most definitely do, but it still counted. That was easy and it was a condition that Sting really didn't mind. Even he had to admit it wasn't all that unfair, so he shrugged and turned back to his T.V. and tried to find a movie to watch (since as much as he hated his stalkers in his favourite game, it was boring when they weren't trying to always snipe him and one of them seemed to never play on Friday nights). "Alright. Deal."

"Oh. Okay."

"What? Was there something else?"

"No, no," Lucy said quickly. She was really just a little surprised. The last time they'd spoken two weeks earlier, it hadn't gone that well. Lucy realised she almost expected him to have made more problems and refuse to pay for anything. But nope. He was making it easy and he was actually helping her sort out some kind of arrangement with the Wi-Fi (or really, he was just agreeing to her terms).

And honestly, Lucy loved that. So yeah, she would prefer it a whole lot more if she wasn't having to share her internet at all, but this was something she could deal with, and she was glad that Sting could, too.

Although, as he apparently finally decided on something to watch and Lucy heard it begin to play, Lucy was only realising that it was probably just because he was bored since he had the attention span of a pre-schooler and most likely wanted her to leave. Which was fine, really, because she was only there to give Sting her first and final offer when it came to her internet and she'd really much rather prefer to be curling up on her lounge with Bickslow and Blair and eating banana bread anyway.

So she got that it was time to leave. She could sort of how Sting would pay for it another time. "So uh… That's okay then?" Lucy asked.

"Yup!" Sting beamed. "That's cool. Right, Rogue?"

The raven-haired brother nodded as he continued to pet his cat. "Yeah, that's fine," he mumbled before reaching for his Batman coffee mug again and taking a sip. "But it's a Friday so I assume you have somewhere else you'd much rather be," he said, looking to Lucy again. "So I can come by at some point on the weekend to get that payment sorted, if you'd like."

Lucy nodded. "That should be fine. I'll be home all weekend so…" _Ah, yes. Good idea, Lucy. Just go and tell people you barely know that you practically have no life most of the time._

"Oh. You're leaving then?" Sting suddenly chimed in again.

"Well, yeah…"

Sting frowned slightly and he deflated just a little before he was flashing a wide grin and lighting up. "Oh! Why don't you stay?" he suggested all of a sudden.

"Huh?" both Lucy and Rogue said.

"Yeah!" the blond continued excitedly, ignoring the confusion on their faces. "You like movies, right? Everyone likes movies. Watch a movie with us!"

"Uh…"

"Come on, it'll be fun. I choose the best movies, I promise," Sting insisted, and before Lucy even knew it, she was being dragged to the lounge by the man and was then sitting between the two brothers just a little uncomfortably. "Hey! It's Netflix and chill!"

Lucy grimaced and Rogue only hid his face in his hand. So she was realising that Sting really was just a little too similar to Natsu. His innocence (or maybe just obliviousness) was just strangely adorable though, even if it was just a little strange. "Uh… No…" Lucy mumbled.

"What? We're watching Netflix and chilling!"

"Lucy," Rogue cut in before she could even explain how wrong he was. "You can go, it's okay."

But strangely, Lucy didn't really want to all of a sudden. Bickslow, Blair, and banana bread could wait for a couple of hours. Watching what Lucy already knew was something that would have her sides aching from laughing too much with her new friends seemed to be a good idea.

Although, she really hoped she wasn't going to have to explain that she would only stay if it was _strictly_ chilling. She doubted she would have to, but still.

* * *

 _This was originally going to be titled Netflix and Strictly Chill, but then I decided that this one worked just a tiny bit better. There'll be a lot more of Rogue and Sting at some point, so I'll probably be using that title in one of their other chapters. I'm not too sure yet. Rogue will get his own prompt though, and then Sting and Rogue will get another one, so there's **at least** two more for them, maybe more depending on where I decide to put a few things, if anyone was wondering. Hopefully there'll be more from their POVs, too, since this one was obviously lacking it... _

_Anyway. Hope you liked it. Until next time._

 _\- April_


	8. Netflix and Ice-Cream?

_I finally have another chapter for this written. It's short, and not at all accurate, but... eh. It'll do, I suppose. (Don't hate me.)_

 _ **Prompt** : Why are you crying in the hallway? Are you okay? Let's go to my place, I have ice cream and Netflix._  
 _ **Characters:** Cana and Lucy. Mentions of Gildarts, Bickslow, and of course, Blair. _

* * *

**_NETFLIX AND... ICE-CREAM?_**

* * *

The first time Lucy met Cana, it had been at a bar, not all that long after she'd moved into the building. Well, it had been five, nearly six months after she'd moved in, but whatever.

She'd had a horrible day at work. The editor had been in a foul mood and had taken it out on her and her stories – the ones that she'd changed countless times that week and had spent too many hours slaving away over in the middle of the night – and since Bickslow had decided to seemingly start ignoring her entirely at that point (or he'd just disappeared off the face of the earth or something), she'd really just needed to go and drink her misery away. So she'd gone to a bar just a few blocks away from the apartment, and made her liver, stomach, and head absolutely hate her the next morning.

Oh, and met Cana. Because she'd been sitting next to Cana at the bar the entire night, and at some point when they'd both been absolutely trashed, they'd started bitching about people together. And then when they'd decided to call it a night, since the bartender had been getting sick of their drunken giggling, they'd found themselves stumbling through the city back towards their respective homes, just to find out that the reason they'd been heading in the same direction had been because they lived in the same building. And of course, more drunken giggling had ensued.

That had been a little over two months earlier, and now, Cana was already one of her closest friends. And really, it made getting drunk in the middle of the week so much more fun. Levy wasn't interested in that. Neither was Gajeel. Or Natsu, or Gray, or Laxus, or Sting or Rogue (that's what Friday night was for), and Lucy was most definitely not going to ask Midnight to get drunk with her in the middle of the week. The sleepy panda still didn't really like her much, but that was okay. And the guy she'd caught going through her mailbox a couple of weeks earlier was also most not definitely going to get an invitation to get drunk. The one-eyed bastard could go and get drunk by himself, thank you very much.

Cana was all Lucy needed.

But now, it was August. Cana was her drinking buddy and one of her favourite neighbours and already one of her closest friends, and so when Lucy gets back from work one afternoon, just to find Cana crying as discreetly as she could manage as she checked her mail, she worries. She hates seeing her friends upset, and Lucy was just the kind of friend that liked helping her friends. She wanted to help Cana.

Lucy only quickly checked her own mail as Cana sniffled and smiled politely to her before turning her face away to continue rifling through the bills she should probably think about paying soon. Then, after checking her own little mailbox and tucking it all into her purse, Lucy turned and gently laid her hand on the brunette's shoulder. "Hey, Cana…" she whispered. "Are you okay? Why are you crying?"

The woman shook her head. "I-It's nothing," she stammered, and forced another small smile for her friend. It wasn't anything to worry Lucy about, right? "I'm okay."

Lucy wasn't going to take as an answer, though. Oh no. She just couldn't. Maybe Cana didn't want to talk about what had upset her. That was fine. Lucy could accept that. Sort of. But at the very least, Lucy could give her some company. "Alright, come on." She laced her arm through Cana's and dragged her away from the mailboxes and towards the elevator. "Let's go to my place. I have ice-cream and Netflix."

"Lucy…"

"Nope. I also have wine. And vodka. You're coming."

Cana could only smile and let the woman drag her.

* * *

Lucy settled herself on the lounge and under the blanket next to Cana, then handed her a spoon before she tossed the ice-cream container lid onto the coffee table in front of them. Cana merely whispered a small thank you to Lucy before taking a spoonful of the vanilla ice-cream.

Cana really was thankful that Lucy was her friend right then, though. She hadn't known anyone else in the building until she had met her, since her last friends there – the Strausses – had moved out not even a year before Lucy had moved in. It had been a lonely several months for Cana to say the least, but it was better for her now. She had new people in her life she adored and couldn't imagine her life without, and when she was missing the one person who meant the most to her, people like Lucy were all Cana needed, even if she hadn't really wanted to admit it at first.

"So, is there anything in particular you'd like to watch?" Lucy asked. She figured that since she was trying to cheer up (or maybe distract) Cana, that they should at least watch something she likes. Maybe she had a favourite movie or something to watch when she was upset? Lucy did – it was _Star Wars_ , and all seven of them (well, at that point). But as much as Lucy wouldn't mind spending the next fifteen-odd hours having a _Star Wars_ marathon, she doubted Cana would want to do that too.

"Um, no… Not really," Cana mumbled. "Whatever you want to watch is okay."

Well, that didn't make things any easier for Lucy, but she would work around it. So she only waited until Cana was already finished with her first glass of red and halfway through her second before she tried asking about what was upsetting her. She still wanted to know, just so she could know if she could help, and Lucy really hoped she could. She didn't like seeing or knowing her friends were hurting. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Cana shrugged. She wasn't sure if she wanted to or not now. She knew Lucy had good intentions, and maybe, just maybe, telling her wouldn't be the worst thing… But then again, maybe getting Lucy involved and having her pity her really would be as bad as she thought. Because really, Cana didn't want Lucy's pity. Anything but that.

"You know you can tell me anything, Cana," the blonde said softly, still slowly flicking through to find the perfect movie to watch.

She let out a sigh and took another spoonful of ice-cream. "I'm just being silly. You don't need to worry."

"Oh, come on. I'm sure it's not as silly as you think."

Cana's eyes flicked towards Lucy and she felt herself sinking down into the sofa cushions. "I don't know…"

"Cana…" She could be annoying when she wanted to be. Of course, Lucy didn't exactly want to annoy Cana into telling her, because she didn't want to force Cana to 'trust' her, because if she was forced then it would mean she didn't trust her at all… But Lucy just really wanted to know. She wanted to help her friend and make sure she knew that she could tell her absolutely anything, even if she thought it was silly.

But then Cana was reaching for her wine glass again and quickly downing the rest of it in one go before she admitted just what had been bothering her. "I just really miss my dad," she said in a small voice. Cana knew she really was just being silly, though. It happened all the time – Gildarts would always leave and come back, because that was just his job. She'd grown up with that happening her entire life, but no matter how many times Gildarts could leave and come back, she still missed him when he was gone, and she constantly worried that it would his last time leaving and that he wouldn't come back again. Sighing, Cana added, "He's in the army, and he gets deployed a lot."

"That must be hard," Lucy said softly.

Cana shrugged. "I guess. I mean, I'm used to him leaving all the time, but I just… I worry about him."

"Did he leave again recently then?"

"A couple of hours ago," she answered, getting another spoonful of the ice-cream before she passed the tub back to the blonde beside her. "He's only supposed to be gone for six months this time, though, and it's only for training now, too, so I know he'll be coming back. But sometimes I still just can't help but think it's the last time I'll see him, and I really, _really_ wish he could just stay home for a little bit longer sometimes." Better yet, he could stay home for good. But Cana knew Gildarts didn't want to retire just yet. Not completely, anyway. She was sure her father wanted to die still doing what he could.

"Aw, honey." Lucy was only able to quickly wrap her arms around the woman's shoulders to bring Cana's head down to her shoulder. She needed a hug. And Lucy was really good at giving hugs. She had Blair to practice on. "I'm sorry."

The feeling of missing a parent was not one Lucy understood. Not like that, at least. Her mother had died when she'd been young, and the last time she'd spoken to her father was when she'd told him she didn't want him attending her college graduation nearly two years earlier. She didn't regret icing him out. She was better off without him. But Lucy could still feel for Cana. If she had someone important like that in her life that that was in that line of work, she'd be as upset and worried as Cana was, too.

Cana just shrugged again and got another spoonful of ice-cream. "S'okay," she mumbled. "But um…" Cana tilted her head up on Lucy's shoulder as the blonde dug her own spoon into the tub. "Did you ever end up sorting things out with that guy of yours?" A subject change was nice. Plus, she was always curious about Lucy's love life – or lack thereof.

"Ugh. I don't even want to _think_ about him right now," Lucy muttered with a roll of her eyes. Aside from the fact that it was about Cana right then and not her, Lucy just really did not want to talk about Bickslow. At all. Or think about him. She could bitch about her sort of ex-boyfriend with Cana another night. "On another note though, how do you feel about watching _10 Things I Hate About You_?" That one always managed to cheer her up.

"That sounds like a great idea," Cana smiled. "But you know we're going to need more wine though, right?"

"Oh, of course. So… I will go and find more alcohol, and you can find the movie."

So while Lucy searched for something else to get them as drunk as possible (she realised at some point she'd run out of vodka, and it had probably been around the time she'd started hating her neighbour), Cana just silently went about searching for the first movie of the evening. Except it wasn't a very productive search – she didn't even type in the name of it – for she was too busy staring at the weirdest collection of Netflix recommendations she had ever seen.

"Uh, Lucy?" she called over her shoulder. "Why are your Netflix recommendations so strange?"

"It's probably best I don't answer that."

* * *

 _So, the answer is Sting, of course. Since Lucy and Sting share a Netflix account, Sting likes to go onto Lucy's profile and watch random things to screw up the recommendations. But Lucy did the same to him so they're even._

 _Also, yes, that was a mention of Cobra. His chapter (well, the first one) will be next, and will be set **before** Lucy finds Cana crying in the hall. Sort of. It's a little confusing. This AU has confused me so much, not gonna lie. _

_And, yeah... BixLu broke up. Sort of. It's a really funny story. Sort of. It gets sorted out in the Cobra chapters though. Don't worry._


	9. The Mail Mix-Up

_Here is the first of the Cobra chapters, finally. I was originally going to make this about twice as long, but then I looked and saw that it was 3k words and I decided to leave it as it is. There's not much to it, I know, but there'll be plenty more of Cobra to come still._

 _ **Prompt:** LISTEN BUDDY. I KNOW YOU SNOOP THROUGH MY MAIL. I SAW YOU.  
 **Characters:** Lucy, Cobra, Bickslow_

* * *

 **THE MAIL MIX-UP**

* * *

There were many things Erik hated about his apartment building, but so far, none of them had proven to be annoying enough to get him to move out. Not even the fact that his old college roommate, Macbeth, lived a few floors above him was enough to have Erik packing up his things; and neither the ridiculously thin walls and the horribly annoying and noisy neighbours (especially the bartender that was in the apartment next to his) were enough to drive him out either.

Most of the things Erik hated about his apartment building were just teensy little annoyances that he could, unfortunately, live with.

But the case of his disappearing mail was not a teensy little annoyance. That was just downright fucking frustrating. Especially when he got phone calls from women with annoying little voices telling him that he'd failed to pay his water bill that month. But it wasn't his fault he hadn't paid it that month, because he hadn't been sent the damn bill in the first place so he'd been incapable of paying it. But of course, the women with the annoying little voices only insisted that they'd sent him the bill, and that his water would just be shut off unless he paid it within three days.

And so of course, when Erik found himself with no water and no electricity, he accepted the fact that maybe, just _maybe_ , some of his mail was really just not being delivered to him. And so that was when his vendetta against the mailman developed, because the damn moron had forced him to bunk with Macbeth again until his apartment was somewhat liveable again.

Once Erik had realised that the entire thing probably had something to do with the moron that delivered the post to the building, he only decided to try and catch them one day. All he wanted to do was talk to them; maybe ask them _politely_ if they'd just been misreading the apartment number or something and all of his mail was actually being delivered to the wrong place. It was surely all just a misunderstanding of some sort…

So Erik waited down in the lobby for the mail to be delivered that afternoon. The only downside was that the postman never came at the same time each day. Some days it was before he usually got home at two when he was working, and others it wasn't until closer to four when it got delivered. All Erik knew was that it was never before noon, but that still only meant he had to sit and wait in that damn horrible lobby for four straight hours.

Lucy didn't think much of it when she arrived home at a quarter to four and only saw a postman running out of the building in tears as fast as he could. She was really just too tired to care or wonder why. After having to get to the paper's office at the crack of dawn to try and impress her editor and then spending an entire day constantly re-writing her stories, all Lucy wanted to do was curl up on her lounge with Blair and eat banana bread – which she did actually have some left of. But that was really just because Bickslow hadn't been there to eat it for the last few weeks.

Yawning, Lucy only came off the crowded afternoon sidewalk to step into her building's lobby, and absentmindedly turned to check her mail. She wasn't even going to bother being overly polite and say a simple hello to the neighbour checking his mail there – she simply didn't have the energy to be civil – so she just reached into her bag for her keys to unlock the box for her apartment.

Except the little metal door with 502 clearly labelled on it was already open. And the man that had been leaning against one half of the mailbox and sorting through the envelopes, was actually going through _her_ mail. Lucy even rubbed her eyes to see if she'd just misread the mailbox numbers wrong, but nope, that asshole was literally snooping through her mail right in front of her. _God, I hope I don't have any overdue bills…_

Lucy cleared her throat when she realised that worrying about a stranger seeing that horrible red stamp across an envelope wasn't exactly her main concern. The only thing that mattered was that her privacy was being invaded at all. "Um, excuse me. Do you mind?" she asked sardonically when the man failed to notice her presence. "Do you think I could maybe check my mail?"

"Go ahead." Erik merely grunted and stepped away from the mailbox as he continued slowly sorting through one Lucy Heartfilia's mail – she had a hell of a lot of mail too, surprisingly. He only wondered if she ever checked it at all.

Lucy had to refrain from kicking the guy out onto the street, but admittedly, she probably could've been a little more obvious about what she'd meant. Hell, she probably should've just been yanking her mail out of the guy's hands since it was rightfully hers, but… She wanted him to feel fear from getting caught.

She cleared her throat as she gestured to the wad of envelopes in his hand – ones that she had seen marked with her name, too. "I'd like _my_ mail now, if you please," she said instead.

Erik glanced up to her and shrugged. "Then get it?" What the hell did it have to do with him? Did she need him to hold her hand to unlock the damn box or something? He already knew he had some weird neighbours, but this… This was something else.

"You're holding it."

… _Fuck_. Now he got it, and all Erik did was lift his head slowly to stare at the woman whose mail he'd been caught going through. Thankfully, _Lucy_ didn't look so pissed that she was ready to call the cops on him or anything, and Erik only decided to use that to his advantage.

He just wasn't done yet, and after seeing the postman deliver absolutely nothing to his own mailbox, he'd just decided what he thought would be the most logical place for his mail to have ended up – the box numbered 502. His own apartment was 205, so if the postman was as much as an imbecile as he made himself seem, then maybe his mail had been being delivered to Lucy's mailbox for all that time.

So far, Erik just hadn't had any luck. He was almost done going through her mail though, so Lucy would get her mail back then. He just nodded quickly and then looked back down to the envelopes in his hand, and seeing _Lucy Heartfilia_ through the little window instead of his own name, he just moved it to the back of the pile to read the next one. "Just a minute," he mumbled. "Almost done with it."

"Almost done?" What do you mean _almost done_?!" Lucy shrieked. She couldn't believe him. He just didn't care at all that she was literally standing right there, watching him go through her mail. Just what in the world was wrong with him? Lucy only stepped forward to try and finally snatch them from his hands, but only ended up almost stumbling into the man when he abruptly turned away and held them out of reach. "Give them back!"

"Jesus, woman. In a min— _aha!_ There it fucking is!" He cringed at the red stamp on the front of the envelope labelled with his name on it, but with the wrong apartment number connected to the building's address. He'd most definitely have to fix that. So tucking his own mail under his arm, he merely held the rest out over his shoulder for the blonde to take back. "There ya go."

Lucy blinked at him in surprise. She almost let him just walk away she was so shocked, but she was quickly reeling back in that shock and hit the bundle of envelopes over the back of the man's head. "Hey! Don't you walk away from me, mister!"

Erik rolled his good eye before turning back around with a groan. All he wanted to do was go back upstairs to pay his damn bills. But no, he couldn't. He had to put up with a woman who Erik was sure was probably some kind of psychopath. "What do you want?" he sighed.

"To know just what the heck you were doing going through my mail just now!" Lucy raged. "And what was that you just took?" She even tried reaching for the single envelope she saw the man had tucked under his arm, but he only stepped back and glared at her – well, sort of.

"Hey! This is mine!" Although really, if _Lucy_ wanted to maybe pay his bills for him, he wouldn't mind… But it was his mail and she had no right to see it. She could keep her hands away from it, thank you very much.

She waved the handful of envelopes in front of his face as she pointed out angrily, "But I just watched you take it from _my_ mail! And you still haven't even explained just what you were doing going through it!"

Erik let out a sigh of frustration and lifted a hand to rub the side of his head. He was getting a headache from all of her screeching and screaming, and the angrier she got, the higher her voice got. "God, woman. Just take a chill pill or something…" Erik mumbled.

"A chill pill? You want me to take a _chill pill_?! Gosh, what is _wrong_ —"

"Hey! You!" Erik completely ignored the blonde's screeches again as he shouted to the blue-haired man that had seemingly been making a point of trying to get past them without being noticed. "This psychopath. You know her?"

Bickslow only froze in place when he realised he was actually being spoken to. He _really_ hadn't wanted to be noticed. Aside from the fact that seeing people argue in public was just embarrassing and awkward for everyone, Lucy being involved in that argument just made it even worse.

He wasn't even sure what had gone wrong between them. He'd had to go out of town for a couple of weeks barely two weeks earlier, and as soon as he'd gotten back, Lucy had been ignoring him. And sure, Bickslow hadn't really had the time to call Lucy or anything when he'd had to go visit his family on the other side of the damn _continent_ all of a sudden, and the one time he had actually responded to any of her messages or calls… It hadn't exactly been the best time to do so, especially since it had also been the day he'd buried his mother.

But he hadn't been able to tell Lucy that then. He hadn't told her any of it, not even when he'd gotten back to Magnolia. He'd wanted to, but then when he'd gone to see Lucy after getting back, she'd only made it painfully obvious that _she_ didn't want to see _him_. She didn't even want to talk to him.

So Bickslow had just left it, even without figuring out what had happened. He'd thought they'd been pretty good, even having only dated for a month and a half by the time he'd had to go see his family, but apparently Lucy had thought otherwise. He'd just done his best to stay out of her way since then; he'd even gone as far as closing his bathroom window so he wouldn't have to keep returning Blair to her.

And now, the fact that he was being asked by a complete stranger if he _knew_ her? Just what had he done to deserve that kind of misery? Because the entire thing really fucking sucked, and the last two weeks had only had him more miserable than he cared to admit. "Uh… Um…"

Lucy only ignored the dull ache in her chest when she'd turned to see who the maroon-haired asshole was talking to. She'd just been trying her hardest to avoid Bickslow as much as possible since their sudden break-up. After ignoring all of her calls and messages for two weeks straight and basically just making it seem like he'd disappeared off the face of the earth, she'd gotten the message that he didn't want to see her anymore loud and clear. Even when he'd texted her and asked her if they could actually talk and if he could see her just a week earlier, all she'd been able to do was say that there was nothing to talk about. It didn't help that she hadn't _wanted_ to see him, and seeing him right then in the lobby just made her remember just why she'd said no to him.

It hurt. Because she missed him, and even _Blair_ missed him. But if Bickslow didn't want to be with her, then she didn't really want to rub her existence in his face. The fact their bedrooms and apartments shared one ridiculously thin wall was bad enough.

And of all the people to see her lose her temper at a complete stranger, it just had to be Bickslow. Her day was really just getting progressively worse.

"She's fucking _insane_ , right?" Erik said when he failed to realise that both the blonde woman and the blue-haired man had both become uncomfortably silent. He was thankful for the former, but really, Lucy was a fucking psychopath. She had to be. "But if you haven't had the pleasure of actually meeting this nutcase," he continued, only pointing his thumb to the girl. "Then you're one lucky son of a bitch."

"Uh… Sure…" Bickslow mumbled. He really just thought he was lucky having actually met her. Just a little psychotic, sure, but that's what made her Lucy. "But I, um… I should go now… Leave you two to it…" He kept his head down as he headed for the elevator, and then only hoped that it wouldn't take a million years to get there for a change.

Erik sighed again before turning back to the blonde. "Seriously, you need to like, calm the hell down, lady," he said indifferently, still not really noticing just how calm Lucy presently was. "You're making a big deal out of nothing." He didn't see the reason for her going off on him like that. He'd only been looking for what was rightfully his. It wasn't like he'd been being a creep or anything.

Lucy didn't really feel like yelling anymore though. She'd almost forgotten why she'd been so mad in the first place, but being told that she was making a big deal over nothing just reminded her of it all. "Well, excuse me for thinking that it's wrong of someone I don't know to be going through my mail," she said quietly, though she didn't keep the edge from it. "You haven't even told me why, either."

He sighed again. _At least she's not shouting anymore_. "Well, if you must know, that incompetent ass-hat that delivers the mail has been misplacing half of my mail for weeks. And, since our apartments have opposite numbers, I figured he'd just been delivering them to the wrong person." He shrugged before continuing, "And your cubby wasn't locked, so I thought I'd check if the guy was really as stupid as I thought."

She'd been wondering how he'd gotten to her mail, since she usually did lock it every time she checked it. And really, if he was telling the truth, it didn't really seem half as bad as she'd originally thought. Still, he'd invaded her privacy, but… Lucy could forgive him. She nodded before pulling her keys out to make a point of locking her small cubby on the mailbox. "So you're in apartment 205 then?"

"Yeah," he mumbled.

"And I take it you found what you were looking for?"

Erik nodded and even held up the envelope for her to quickly look at. "I did. But the fucking morons there put the wrong address on it this time so that's why it actually got delivered to you," he grumbled. "But hey, do me a favour, will ya?"

Lucy didn't really think _Erik_ – or so his name on the envelope said – was in any position to be asking favours of her at that point, but she'd hear him out.

"If you get any shit for me delivered to you, can you just put it in 205 for me?" And it

wasn't like Erik liked asking for favours or anything, but the last thing he wanted to be doing was get his utilities shut off again because he hadn't been able to pay them. Rooming with Macbeth was a fucking nightmare. He still didn't even understand why the building's owner made everyone's utilities come under separate bills, but Erik already knew they were a complete and utter moron, too, so the less he had to deal with them, the better. It was all just too frustrating.

Lucy only had to consider it for a moment. Passing on someone else's mail was the right thing to do, and it was easy. She hadn't noticed anyone else's being delivered to her in the last few weeks, but that wasn't something she could do anything about. At the very least, though, she could do the right thing and help her neighbour out. She gave him a small smile and nodded. "Sure thing, Erik," she said softly.

He was taken aback by the sudden kindness for just a moment, and was then grimacing. _Right. She knows my name now._ Because he'd been stupid enough to let her see his stupid bill. _Damn it._ "Don't call me Erik."

"Oh… Okay. Then what?" She doubted she'd be needing to actually speak to him anytime soon, but it was always nice to know the names of her neighbours. The nameplates weren't very useful since they only have surnames.

"Cobra."

Lucy nodded again and let another smile fall on her lips. "Alright, Cobra."

* * *

 _I know it doesn't really go with the prompt at all, but still..._

 _Anyway. I was originally planning on having the rest of the entire BixLu breaking up (and getting back together) in this, but that will be in the next one of Cobra's chapters. I did say there'd be some CoLu in this..._

 _Also, I know that the timeline for this is weird, and without spoiling too much, here's how it is:  
\- Bickslow disappears.  
\- Lucy first meets Cana while Bickslow is gone, and then they realise they live in the same apartment.  
\- **Lucy first meets Cobra** (this chapter)  
\- Lucy and Cana drink too much, eat more ice-cream than humanly possible, and watch stupid movies on Netflix (previous chapter). _

_So long story short, this chapter is technically set before the previous chapter, which was Cana's. I did also mention that this would not be in order at times, but I would try and make sense of things where it's not obvious. I hope that cleared things up if anyone was curious. So, really, Lucy's bitterness in the previous chapter was after this, so she's had a bit more time to get her feelings sorted out..._


	10. The Start of Something Wonderful

_Again, sorry this one isn't being updated as frequently as some of my other stories (like those are exactly 'frequent' anyway...). This, like the BixCo/GaLu is another one of the stories where I had no intentions of putting a lot of time and effort into. It was just a fun, little story that allowed me to explore a lot of different characters and work on how their relationships with Lucy would be._

 _Anyway, I started this chapter a while back, before I put it on hold, so, I decided it was about time to finish it off and get it posted. It was supposed to be longer, and it wasn't just supposed to be this one scene... But, yeah. I'll save the rest of this chapter for the next one (which means Cobra will be getting another chapter after this one, and Bickslow and Blair will return in that one). I did say there'd be a little bit of CoLu in this story... Most of it is going to be in the next chapter though._

 _No prompt for this one. Just random rambling that I think works for them._

 _ **Characters:** Lucy, Cobra. _

* * *

**THE START OF SOMETHING WONDERFUL**

* * *

Cobra stared down at the large parcel addressed to Lucy Heartfilia with a scowl. It had been sitting in the lobby for the past two days – why, he had no clue – and he was getting sick of tripping over it.

Since meeting Lucy (and realising she was a bit of a nutcase) a couple of months earlier, Cobra had been visited at least once a week by the woman. He hadn't been able to figure it out the reason for the life of him, but every time Lucy received any of his mail by mistake, she insisted on delivering it to him in person. She apparently wasn't just capable of slipping them into the mailbox like a normal person was, but Cobra had quickly realised Lucy wasn't exactly normal.

They didn't really talk or anything when she came to deliver his mail. She usually just asked him how he was and if he'd had a good day. Most of the time he just ignored her, but occasionally he indulged her and responded. He figured Lucy was doing it because she was a bit lonely, but that was a feeling he could understand, even if he wouldn't admit it.

Never once had Cobra gone to Lucy's apartment, though. He wasn't exactly a _sociable_ person, and he'd never actually had a reason to visit her place, either. Lucy wasn't the one who was getting her mail misdelivered, it was only him who was. But the parcel sitting right below the mailboxes and getting in the way of things was really driving him insane, and if Lucy wasn't going to come and get her own mail, then he was going to take it to her.

He heaved the box up from the ground and couldn't help but be a little nosey and see if there was some kind of description of whatever the fuck it was that Lucy had ordered on the delivery label, but there was nothing of the sort so he was only left wondering just what the hell was rattling inside it. Stepping out of lift on the fifth floor, Cobra wandered slowly down the empty hall until he was standing in front of Lucy's apartment. He briefly wondered if the woman was even home since it was only a little before 3 p.m. and he was pretty sure she had some kind of job, but he still knocked on the door anyway after finding a way to balance to box on his knee.

Lucy was home, much to Cobra's surprise, but even more surprising to Cobra was the state she answered the door in: pyjamas on, hair in a lopsided ponytail as if she hadn't touched it for the last two days, and eyes red from crying. It was just a little unnerving, because even though he got the sense she was a bit lonely at times, the few moments they'd shared in the last couple of months, Cobra had pegged Lucy for always being perky and upbeat. Ordinarily, it would've annoyed the living hell out of him – people like that were just so irritating – but right then he was more annoyed by whatever the hell it was that had upset Lucy.

And boy, was that frustrating. Caring about people was not in his wheelhouse.

So that was why he was telling himself that it was purely out of curiosity that he asked the woman, "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Lucy knew enough about him to know that he was a bit of a grumpy asshole, so she ignored the judgemental tone and answered, "Nothing… I'm fine…"

"Yeah, right," Cobra scoffed.

She sighed through her nose and looked down to the box in Cobra's hands. "So is there a particular reason you're here right now? Because if not, I'm not really in the mood for visitors right now," she told him. She'd had a rough week; all she wanted was to be alone, and she most definitely didn't want to be having to deal with one of her asshole neighbours. She wasn't up to dealing with it right then.

Cobra tried not to scowl at the woman. _Someone's grumpy today._ He lifted the box back up instead and shoved it in her direction. "I'm delivering your goddamn mail that's been sitting downstairs for two days," he grumbled. "Because if I tripped over this one more time downstairs, I was going to kick it out to the fucking street and let someone steal it."

"Oh… I'm… I'm sorry," Lucy mumbled. She hadn't been bothered to leave her apartment for the last two days, not needing to be anywhere anymore, so she hadn't even known there was anything downstairs for her. She hadn't even cared to check, to be perfectly honest, and she was really just too tired to even wonder why the delivery man hadn't come up to her apartment to have her sign for it. She took the package from Cobra's hands and nodded politely. "Well, thank you, Erik. Now if you don't mind…"

"Yeah, whatever…" Cobra didn't get a chance to say anything else before Lucy only smiled politely and stepped back to close her door. He took that as his cue to leave and headed back to the lift.

Once back in his own apartment, Cobra only laid in bed, staring up at the blank ceiling and trying his best to ignore his upstairs neighbour stomping around as he usually did. He really wasn't one to care or think about people all that much, but Lucy… Cobra couldn't seem to get her out of his head right then, and it was more annoying than anything. The fact she'd been so unlike her usual cheery self was honestly still bothering him. And really, Cobra couldn't help but wonder just what the fuck was wrong with her.

Curiosity was unfortunately getting the better of him, and with a scowl and curses under his breath, Cobra was grabbing the bottle of vodka sitting above his fridge and storming out into the apartment hall, just to head for the elevator again. He was questioning himself all the way to Lucy's apartment on the fifth floor, and by the time he was knocking on her door, he still wasn't quite sure what the hell he was doing.

But when the door opened and once again he was greeted by the cranky blonde, now only eyeing him curiously (and probably suspiciously), Cobra simply lifted the half-empty bottle of vodka up and said, "Want to get drunk with me?"

Had it been any other day (or week), Lucy probably would've said no; the only people she liked to drink with were Cana and Levy, and then Blair if she counted the damn cat. But right then, she couldn't turn it down. Getting drunk in the middle of the afternoon seemed like a wonderful idea, and honestly... She kind of wanted the company.

So she stepped out of the way to let Cobra (and the vodka) into her apartment. She was just a little embarrassed once the door was closed though, only now just noticing how messy the place had become in the last few days. "I, uh... Sorry about the mess…" Lucy mumbled. She picked up the washing basket with the growing pile of dirty laundry in it and quickly carried it out of sight; the last thing she needed was Cobra seeing her dirty underwear sitting at the top of the pile.

Cobra didn't think it was that bad. He'd seen worse when he'd been living in the dorms with Midnight. "Don't worry about it."

Lucy nodded, and just turned for her kitchen to fetch some glasses. She glanced back to her guest now sitting stiffly on her sofa, and was about to ask what he wanted to drink with his vodka before she bit her tongue. Somehow, Cobra didn't seem like the person to mix his vodka with anything else – not unless it was something alcoholic, at least. So instead, Lucy only pulled out the shot glasses from the very back of her cupboard, and took them over to the opposite side of her small breakfast bar where her lounge was.

Cobra couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at her in surprise as the tiny cups were placed down on the coffee table. He half expected the little blonde to be bringing back some lemonade or even some juice to have with it, but apparently not. Of course, Lucy noticed the odd look he was giving her, but assumed it was because she'd guessed wrong about his drink preference and so she said, "Oh, did you want something else to drink it with?"

He shook his head and laughed a little in surprise. "Me? Hell no," Cobra scoffed. "I just figured you would, considering you're a chick and all." He'd yet to actually meet a member of the opposite sex who could hold her liquor – well, excluding one of his neighbours named Cana. But that woman was something else, and she seemed to have a liver made of steel or something. But with how small Lucy was, it wasn't exactly that odd for him to have assumed that she preferred to have her vodka with something like orange juice… right?

Lucy didn't feel she had to explain herself, so she didn't (although she ordinarily did prefer to drink something other than just straight vodka). She picked up the large bottle to unscrew the cap, and then carefully filled up the two shot glasses on the coffee table in front of her. She saw no point in sealing the bottle – it was half empty as it was, and honestly, Lucy planned on emptying it completely by the end of the night – so she just picked the two glasses up, handed one to her guest beside her, and asked, "So, what are we drinking to?"

"You tell me, Blondie," Cobra shrugged.

"Alright." Lucy nodded and pursed her lips before holding up her tiny glass. "How about to… To leaving shitty jobs with asshole bosses behind, and finding ones where you're respected!"

Cobra watched with an eyebrow raised as the blonde downed it quickly without so much as wincing. "Well, that's certainly something," he mumbled. But it was something he was sure as hell going to drink to. He'd had his fair share of asshole bosses in his life. Hell, his current boss was the biggest jerk under the sun… But he needed the money, so Cobra didn't tell the jackass where he could stick it.

"Yeah, tell me about it," Lucy scoffed. She was already filling up hers and Cobra's empty glasses by that point and getting ready empty her second shot in less than a minute. "How freaking hard is it to just be nice to someone and not treat them like shit? Jesus Christ…"

"You're talking to the wrong guy about that, Sweetness."

Thankfully, Lucy had already swallowed her vodka again at that point, but she was sure she would have spat it right back out had she still been drinking it. "Sweetness?" she echoed, an eyebrow arched and a hint of a blush forming on her cheeks.

Cobra literally waved it off as he snatched the glass bottle from Lucy's other hand and refilled his own glass. "Ain't mean anything, don't worry," he replied with a scowl. Truthfully, he had no fucking clue where 'Sweetness' had come from, because he couldn't remember ever saying the damn word in his entire life. Lucy decided not to think of it for a second longer, and that suited Cobra perfectly.

By the time Lucy was well and truly on her way to being completely trashed, Cobra hadn't managed to learn anything interesting about her in the slightest. For the most part, all Lucy had done was complain about her boss – or more accurately, complain about the guy's horrendous toupe – bitch about her neighbour, who from what Cobra could tell had also been her boyfriend or something, and also mumble incoherent strings of sentences about how she was going to pay her bills.

And it was likely that whatever had upset Lucy so much to make her willing to drink with _him_ had gone over his head, because really, Cobra wasn't a very good people person. But the drunker Lucy got, the more confused and curious Cobra came. Damn it, he wanted to know why she'd been crying!

So, Cobra did the only other thing he could think of. And he had to take a shot of the vodka to get him there, but still. "So, Sweetness," he began, only slurring slightly as he relaxed back into her lounge and covered himself with all her pillows. "You wanna finally tell me why you were cryin' earlier?"

Lucy sighed before answering drunkenly, "Got… fired. 'Cause m' boss is an ass… Though he does have a cute ass… I think he's gay though. Straight guys don't have cute asses." _Bickslow had a cute butt though_ … Her face lit up as she turned back to Cobra beside her. "Oh! You have a cute ass too, Er—Erik!," she giggled. "I just wanna pinch it!"

Cobra tried his best to become part of the lounge itself, grimacing and pushing Lucy off of him as she tried her best to climb into his lap (or, the mountain of pillows, really). No one was pinching his ass, thank you. And it certainly wasn't going to be Lucy. "Alright, I think you'd had enough to drink now…" he mumbled. He'd realised that earlier, of course… But now? Now he was definitely certain of that. "But you got fired, huh? Just out of the blue?"

" _Yuuuup_ …"

"That's pretty shitty," he said. Even by his standards it was a dick move. "What'd you even do anyway?"

"Write," Lucy drawled. "Or try to, at least." She obviously hadn't been very good at it if her boss had decided to let go of her. He'd been riding her ass for _months_ about her stories, though. Always sending them back the day before the final print of all the papers each weekend, telling her that they were wrong and that they weren't good enough. And all those hours that Lucy had spent drafting, editing, and rewriting them all… Most of it had been for nothing. The last time the editor had put any of her short stories in the arts section, she'd still been dating Bickslow, so it had been almost two months..

Honestly though, part of her was relieved she'd been fired. It had been a horrible job. The pay had been shitty, but also just enough to keep her afloat. That was what Lucy was most worried about, though. Not that she didn't have a job anymore, but that she was going to be flat broke in just another two weeks (she'd already figured out her budget, as soon as she'd been told her pack up her tiny desk and go home that morning), and then… Lucy had absolutely no idea what she'd do.

"You're a writer? Huh. Didn't expect that. What do you write then? Articles and shit?"

"Stories. Mostly short stories." She reached for the bottle again and took a small sip before continuing with the odd ill-timed hiccup, "Used to work for the—the Magnolia Chronicle. Used to get published in that ev-every weekend."

Cobra didn't read the paper much, so it made sense he hadn't seen anything of hers before. He didn't read much in general, to be honest – his pharmacology degree had pretty much put him off reading for life, so now the only thing he could stand to read was prescriptions. But, he'd be lying if he said he wasn't at least curious about Lucy's stories. "You're totally gonna let me read some of your stories though, right?"

Lucy scoffed. "No… God no." They weren't worth him reading. They weren't worth anyone reading… Her _ex_ -boss had pointed that out to her.

"Why? You write _porn_ or some shit and don't want me to read it?"

"What? No!" Lucy shrieked. She didn't write porn. Well, granted, she had done so in the past – and she might've written some after Bickslow had shown up at her door in nothing but a towel to give Blair back to her… But she wasn't known for writing erotica. Oh no.

"Then why can't I read it?" Erik chuckled.

"Because… Because they're not—very good."

"Fuckin' bullshit."

"It isn't! I got _fired_ , remember?"

Cobra shrugged. Okay, she had a point there. But still, as far as Cobra could tell, she had to have been good to have been hired in the first place. And sure, she got fired, but… Well, maybe that just meant she was free to move on to bigger and better things. It sounded like her boss had been the biggest asshole on the planet too, so not having to work for him should be enough for Lucy to be relieved.

Of course, he still understood why Lucy would've been crying over getting fired, because that shit was stressful.

"You still got _hired_ , though," Cobra pointed out. He snatched the bottle back from her to take a drink. "Means they saw potential in you at some point, right?"

"Yeah, then they just realised I suck," she sneered.

"Well, true, but—"

"See! So I _do_ suck!"

Cobra grimaced when Lucy suddenly burst into a fit of tears. And drunk people crying… He thought he'd stopped having to deal with crying people after he'd graduated college and moved out of the dorms, or after he'd just started passing off anyone who looked like they were about to burst into tears (mostly teenagers coming in to buy pregnancy tests, it seemed) off to his assistant at the pharmacy. Cobra didn't like dealing with crying people, but admittedly, he knew that Lucy was crying because of him, so it seemed only fair that he comfort her. Or, at least _try_ to comfort her.

The problem was that Cobra was really, really bad at comforting people. He was also bad at talking to people, but that was why he had a drunk, sobbing, blonde woman next to him. "Wait, that's not… I didn't…" Damn it. His hand recoiled as soon as it had gone out; he had a feeling touching people was supposed to be good in comforting situations, but god fucking damn it, touching people was so damn weird sometimes. That, and he was so fucking scared of Lucy right then – one minute she was trying to climb into his lap and asking how fucking cute his ass was _(very cute, of course_ ), and the next she was sobbing?!

Lucy was one hell of a drunk, that was for sure.

"I'm terrible!" she wailed. "Even you think so! And you haven't even seen it!" She'd always suspected that her work really was terrible. Of course though, no one ever really told her that, apart from her douchebag boss and a few people she'd pissed off from her online stories because she'd written their favourite character wrong or something. But everyone else? Everyone else was afraid of telling her she sucked.

Apart from Erik, it seemed.

He cringed as her cries grew louder and more annoying. God, he'd fucked up. "I didn't mean it. I promise."

"Yes you did."

"I did fucking not." Cobra looked around Lucy's apartment quickly. He spied her desk in a nook below a window, and a stack of papers sitting on the corner of it. So granted, maybe Cobra had meant it when he'd agreed with Lucy before, about how maybe she hadn't been as good as she'd once been when she'd been hired. But that didn't mean he believed that Lucy really was terrible at writing. She had to be good to have been hired in the first place, and now that he'd upset her, Cobra was set on proving to her that he really didn't think she was the worst writer in the whole world.

So he got up from the lounge quickly, setting the pillows aside, and made his way over to Lucy's desk.

She sniffled, lifting her head to watch him. "W-What are you doing?"

"This is yours, right?" Cobra asked. Judging by the red pen marks that covered all the remaining spaces on the page and were crossing out entire sections of the typed words, Cobra suspected that it was one of Lucy's stories in his hands.

"...Yes..." Lucy answered meekly. That was the story that had essentially been the nail in the coffin; the one that had gotten her fired. It hadn't been her favourite before she'd submitted it, and it certainly wasn't now, even after she'd spent almost twice as long editing it and revising it than actually writing it in the first place. Of course, all that editing had been for nothing in the end. "Please don't read it..."

He was going to read it anyway, of course. And so Cobra sat himself down at Lucy's desk, propped his feet up on the corner, and began reading.

It was harder than he'd expected it to be, simply because half of it had been crossed out, written over, or Lucy had added skipped words between the lines, or expanded on sentences or just written things like _'what the fuck was I thinking here?!'_ in the margins. But, Cobra did eventually finish the three-page story about the young girl named Rachel who eventually finds love and success at the end of the tunnel.

Admittedly, he hadn't liked it, but that was mostly because romance stories made him cringe and want to vomit into his coffee. But aside from his predisposition to dislike it, it hadn't been a _terrible_ story. It might've been better had he been reading the final draft of it - and clearly, he hadn't been. But still, it wasn't the worst thing he'd read.

"It's..."

"Crap," Lucy finished for him.

He rolled his eye. "No. I was going to say it's... _decent,"_ Cobra said. Saying it was _good_ would've been lying.

Lucy scoffed. "Translation: _crap_."

Cobra picked the paper up again and returned to the sofa, sitting himself down right next to Lucy. "Shut up," he mumbled. "But look here." He pointed to a section that miraculously looked like it hadn't been touched and then read it out to Lucy. " _'She hated herself like that. Whenever she looked in the mirror, Rachel couldn't see someone that would ever be worthy of someone's love. But **he** disagreed.' _ I don't even fucking like reading this kind of sappy crap, but even I know a cliche when I see one."

"W-Well, I... I wasn't _trying_ to write a cliche..." Lucy sniffled.

"I take it _romance_ isn't your go-to genre, then."

She scoffed again. "God no. It's predictable. And it's all the same." Lucy avoided writing it as much as possible. She just hated writing it, and any time she was forced to write it - like for assignments, or because 'it's what the readers want to see read' - she ended up having to binge watch crap on Netflix like _The Notebook_ and _Dirty Dancing_ and a whole lot more, just to give her inspiration. Because inspiration for romance stories didn't just come naturally to her. "I hate writing it."

"You kind of made that obvious," Cobra pointed out. He'd been able to tell that it wasn't Lucy's go-to genre just from reading it. It had felt stiff, and it had felt rushed, and even _he_ , a non-reader and hater of romance, had been able to see that a lot of opportunities to expand and make the reader _feel_ had been missed.

Lucy shrugged, taking the bottle of vodka again and bringing it to her lips. "What do you want me to say?" She took a drink. "Ass-boss told me to write romance, and I wrote romance. Or, tried to, at least."

Cobra scowled and snatched the bottle from her hands. He ignored her pout as he set it down out of her reach. "Well, don't write romance then. Simple. Write the shit you want to write." He had no idea what that was, of course, but he had a feeling that once she was within her element, then she'd be a fucking _star_.

"Easier said than done."

"Bullshit. There's nothing stopping you from writing whatever the fuck it is you want to now. You're free, Blondie. No _ass-bosses_ to tell you what to do."

"That's all well and good, but... But _writing_ isn't going to pay my bills anymore! Oh god, my bills!" And just like that, Lucy was dropping her face to her hands and was bursting into tears once more. "What am I going to do?!" she wailed.

Cobra sighed and rolled his eye at the crying woman next to him, and then wrapped his arm around her to pull her into his side. He tried not to cringe when she buried her face against his shoulder and continued to sob. Instead, he only scowled, and reached for the confiscated alcohol just to drink himself - he couldn't be doing _that_ while sober.

* * *

 _Again, I hope you're all keeping track of the chapter titles... The titles themselves will come into the actual story soon. Hehehe..._

 _Now, since the timeline for this chapter is ridiculously confusing, since it's out of place, I'm going to try and keep up with adding it to these notes (you know, when I do update this). So, basically, since my own notes have it listed in months, I figure I'll try and incorporate that here, even if the months themselves aren't always mentioned in the story. It's confused._

Anyway, the story so far:  
\- **November:** Lucy moves into the apartment.  
\- **December:** Lucy meets Bickslow and all that weirdness... (The Cat Thief)  
\- **December:** Laxus breaks her door, because he's totally convinced she's dying (Not All Heroes Wear Capes)  
\- **March:** The Banana Bread incident (The Case of the Mysterious Banana Bread)  
\- **March:** Lucy and Levy meet (Bookworms, Unite!)  
\- **March:** Levy totally tries setting Gajeel and Lucy up, and it doesn't work. (Bookworms, Unite!)  
\- **End of March/Early April:** Bickslow and Lucy finally start dating.  
\- **April:** Lucy meets Midnight, because Bickslow is convinced her neighbour is a ghost (The Ghost Next Door)  
\- **May:** Lucy meets Sting and Rogue and they flesh out the Netflix agreement (The Wi-Fi Thief)  
\- **May:** Bickslow disappears (oooo, spo0oky), Lucy thinks he's ignoring her and they've broken up. Bitter and depressed, Lucy gets drunk, and thus meets Cana. Turns out, they live in the same apartment building.  
\- **End of May/Early June:** Lucy meets Cobra (The Mail Mix-Up). Bickslow has returned...  
\- **June:** Cana is upset about Gildarts leaving again, and of course, Lucy is still bitter about Bickslow. (Netflix and Ice-Cream)  
\- **End of June/Early July:** Lucy gets fired, and Cobra... Well, who knows what Cobra does, apart from make her cry even more. (This chapter)

 _I hope that clears things up for anyone confused. I'll probably just add to this list at the end of every chapter. If you spot any errors within that timeline though, please let me know! Most of it was going off my own notes, not the chapters themselves. And I do remember changing a few things - I'm just not quite sure where I did._


	11. Miscommunication Mishaps

No, I didn't forget this AU existed. I just haven't had the motivation to work on it. I have all the chapter ideas and prompts and all that, but there's just other stories I've been more interested in.

Anyway, hope you enjoy. See the previous chapter for a timeline of this series, since the chapters are occasionally out of order. For the most part though, the rest of the story from here is linear.

Also, no, it isn't edited. I'll get around to it in a few days or something.

* * *

 **MISCOMMUNICATION MISHAPS**

* * *

Bickslow stared up at his ceiling as he tried his best to ignore the rhythmic sound of his neighbour's bed hitting the wall. He'd never really noticed how unstable Lucy's bed frame was when he'd been the one in there, but now that he was on the other side, he definitely couldn't stand it.

It had been months since they'd actually talked. The last time he'd really said anything to her was before he'd had to take a trip out of town for a few weeks. They'd talked on the phone once while he'd been away, but he'd had too much on his plate to deal with at the time so their conversation had been short as all hell. Ever since he'd had to leave though, things had been radio silent, and the longer it went on, the more he hated it.

For the life of him, Bickslow hadn't been able to figure out what he'd done to make Lucy want to ignore him the way that she was. Things had been great before he'd had to take that trip to visit his family, and then all of a sudden she'd decided she wanted nothing to do with him. Bickslow couldn't even say that it hadn't hurt, because it had. But the only conclusion he'd been able to come to was that Lucy had just decided she was done with him when he'd been away. He would've loved to actually be able to talk to her about it, but he'd failed every time he'd attempted to do so.

After nearly three months though, Bickslow still couldn't get his stupid neighbour out of his stupid head. First the stupid cat was still visiting him every day, and now Lucy was seemingly making a point of rubbing it in his face that she'd moved on from him – because Bickslow was very much convinced that Lucy was making it personal. Still, no matter how obvious Lucy had made it that she wanted nothing to do with him, Bickslow was still having a hard time reaching the same mindset.

But, he supposed that was just his own fault anyway. It would be nice if Lucy hadn't been a bitch about it, and it would be even better if their damn apartment walls weren't so fucking thin, but it was still his own fault. That was just what he got for letting himself get too attached.

So as he did every other night, Bickslow only grabbed the pillow from the other side of his bed and sandwiched his face between them to try and block out of the noise.

* * *

"I take it I won't be able to convince you to stay this time either?"

Cobra looked up to Lucy's doorway as he pulled his shirt on over his head. Sleepovers weren't really his thing, and Lucy knew that all too well. "Why do you keep asking me to?" he responded, standing to look around the small room for his pants before he remembered that he'd left them in the living room. "You know the answer is always going to be no."

Lucy shrugged as she let out a little sigh. "I know. I guess I'm just hoping you'll just eventually stay one night," she mumbled. Really though, Lucy wasn't even sure why she bothered asking at all though. Erik wasn't a spend-the-night type of person, and _they_ weren't really doing anything that would even warrant him staying over. They kind of just… fucked. Occasionally they even drank together and watched Netflix together. But for the most part, it was just sex. Lucy wouldn't even go as far to say that they were friends with benefits, because they weren't even really friends. So why she still asked him almost every time he did visit if he was going to stay the night, she had no idea. The answer was no and it was always going to be no.

Still, she couldn't help but be disappointed whenever she heard it.

Cobra's brow furrowed as he watched Lucy tuck herself back into bed, fluffing the pillow up under her head. "Why does it mean so much to you anyway?" he asked. A moment later he heard the annoying jingle of the cat's collar, and looked back to the door just to see the creepy black-furred feline enter the room and then gracefully jump up onto the bed to curl up in front of Lucy.

Lucy shrugged again as she reached to mindlessly rub Blair's ears. "It's not really _important_ or anything," she said. "I guess I just… I like to cuddle, that's all."

Cobra cringed. Cuddling? Hell no. He wasn't into that kind of shit. He was just a little into Lucy for some absurd reason though, and it wasn't exactly like he had anywhere else to be that night – he didn't have work until the afternoon, so he was planning on sleeping in a little. But, maybe just for a change, he could stay at Lucy's. It wasn't like it would be _completely_ horrible. It would probably be weird, sure, especially since he knew for a fact that the cat slept on the bed with her, but for one night, Cobra would tolerate the weird.

He tugged his shirt back off to drop it to the floor and then kicked his pants back off, flicking them off his feet when they caught around his ankles. "No weird shit, alright?" he grumbled as he returned to Lucy's bed, climbing under the _Kylo Ren_ themed duvet – that, honestly, he loathed with a burning passion.

Lucy apparently didn't have a choice of moving over, and dragged Blair with her so Erik didn't crush her. "Wait, you're staying?" she asked. She was pretty sure he was, but it was so unexpected that she really did have to check. "And what exactly is _weird_?"

"I don't know. Just… Just no kissing. I'm not kissing you."

"Oh. I don't expect you to. Anything else?"

"No pillow talk, either."

Lucy nodded. She knew he wasn't one for talking much in general, so she wasn't surprised much. Granted, she missed the stupid conversations she'd always had with Bickslow right before bed, but Erik was no Bickslow, and that was kind of the point. "That's fine," she said. "Is that it?"

Was it? Really, Cobra didn't know. He was kind of just listing anything that came to mind. "And, uh… No touching," he added. "Well, I mean, you can… But not like… a lot. Just don't smother me."

"So… Is this okay then?" She shuffled forward just to gently rest her head on Erik's shoulder, letting her arm drape over his middle to rest on the mattress. So, it was kind of _cuddling_ , but it wasn't really _smothering_ – or so Lucy thought.

Cobra tensed for a moment. It was definitely a little uncomfortable, but it wasn't really _bad_ , either. "It's fine," he mumbled.

"Good," Lucy murmured.

And for the rest of the evening, until they each fell asleep, that was how they stayed. Cobra found he almost enjoyed it, but Lucy came to learn that was what she missed the most about not having Bickslow around anymore. She just liked having someone next to her.

* * *

Bickslow stepped out of his shower to a meow, and he just about jumped out of his skin and slipped on the floor when he saw Blair sitting on his bathroom counter. "This is getting ridiculous, you know that, right?" Bickslow scowled at the cat, keeping an eye on her as he reached for his towel. Blair only meowed at him again, and he couldn't help but roll his eyes. "Almost as ridiculous as the fact I'm talking to a fucking cat," he muttered under his breath.

While he'd been dating Lucy, he really hadn't minded the frequent visits from the black cat. He'd become accustomed to seeing her sitting in his kitchen sink whenever he got home from work, and after a while, he'd come to enjoy the quiet times he spent with Blair curled up on his lap and purring peacefully as he worked on lesson plans for the week. Of course, those nights had been better when he'd had Lucy sitting next to him and constantly bouncing plot ideas off him. But now that they _weren't_ dating, Bickslow's patience was wearing incredibly thin when it came to the black cat with the bright orange eyes.

It wasn't his pet, damn it. Why should he be nice to it? If Lucy couldn't look after her own cat, then she shouldn't have one at all. Either way, it wasn't his problem.

So when he realised Blair had hopped down from the counter to follow him into his bedroom, Bickslow only turned around, picked the cat up and carried it back into the bathroom, put it back out on the fire escape, and finally slammed his window shut. It had been a little sticky, which was part of why he'd always kept it open in the first place, but he'd gotten it fixed some time after Lucy had moved in. He'd just never bothered closing it because he hadn't minded the cat.

Now though, he did mind the cat, so until his neighbour decided to look after her pets, his window was going to stay closed.

Bickslow just tried to tell himself not to feel bad. He shouldn't _have_ to look after Lucy's pets for her, after all. He wasn't required to be a nice neighbour, and he sure as hell didn't want to be one, either.

* * *

"How's the job hunting going?"

"Miserably," Lucy sighed, reaching for another slice of pizza. "How's work?"

"Same as it always is," Cobra mumbled. "Boring." While he liked his job, it got a bit repetitive at time, and the prescription drug addicts always just gave him a headache. "What garbage are you forcing me to endure tonight, anyway?"

Lucy tried not to roll her eyes as she took a bite of the pepperoni pizza. " _Star Trek_ isn't garbage," she muttered, reaching for her remote. "And there's a new episode of _Discovery_ today, so we're watching that."

"Yeah, no." Cobra quickly set his own slice of pizza down and picked up the box to stow it in Lucy's fridge. "We're going out and doing something else."

"But… But pizza," Lucy pointed out.

"Pizza tastes better cold anyway."

"Well, I guess, but… What do you mean, we're going out?"

"It means, we're going out and we're going to do something else other than eat pizza, watch your shitty shows on Netflix, or fuck," Cobra said, pulling on his boots that he'd left by the door. "When was the last time you went out and did something anyway?"

"…I went grocery shopping the other day," Lucy mumbled. "And I had an interview last Friday…"

Cobra refrained from rolling his eye at her. The woman really had no life. She had less of a life than he did, and that was saying something. But still, as her friend (which, was something he was hesitant to say out loud), it was probably his duty or something to make sure she got out of her tiny apartment and did something for a change. "And you just proved my point. Now come on, get your fucking shoes and let's go."

Lucy frowned and shook her head. "No, it's fine. I can't afford to go out anyway. I'll just stay here with my pizza and _Star Trek_." Being out of a job for nearly a month, Lucy had only just been able to get her rent paid. The few freelance jobs she'd done had kind of saved her, but they weren't anything close to being enough to pay her bills all the time. She was lucky her landlord was a nice guy, and that Natsu and Gray had loaned her the last hundred she'd needed to get the last of her bills for that month paid.

Besides, she knew Erik wasn't into the same kind of things she was. She still wasn't entirely sure why he willingly spent time with her at all, because she knew it wasn't just because they occasionally slept together. But she still couldn't expect Erik to put up with her lame interests all the time anyway.

Cobra shook his head and reached to pull Lucy off her lounge. "I'll pay for it, don't worry," he muttered. "Now go, get your damn shoes."

Lucy hesitated for a moment before finally caving, reaching for the remote to turn her television off before rushing to grab her shoes from her room. Perhaps a night out would be good for her, though. She really hadn't gone out anywhere lately anyway. She'd only ever gotten coffee with Levy once or twice since meeting her in the lobby five months earlier, and she'd only gone out for drinks with Cana once. Lucy hadn't even gone out anywhere with Natsu and Gray since moving into the building the previous November, and in the ten months Lucy had lived there, the only person she'd ever spent time with outside the building was Bickslow.

But, things had changed, and perhaps it was time she made a point of having more of a life with the people who actually cared about her.

So grabbing her shoes and her handbag, she only kissed the top of Blair's head where she was curled up at the foot of her bed, told her to stay inside, and then went and met Erik in her living room again.

* * *

Bickslow walked into his bathroom to brush his teeth, just to find Blair sitting outside his window and pawing at the glass. It wasn't the first time he'd walked in to find her sitting there and waiting to be let in, but that time, Bickslow couldn't help but groan and quickly open up the window to let the stupid animal inside. It had started raining earlier, and as much as he tried to say otherwise, he did still like the stupid cat.

He just didn't like its owner very much right then.

"I'm telling Lucy to come and get you, alright?" he said firmly, looking down to the cat curling around his legs. "You're not staying." Blair only purred happily and continued rubbing itself against his leg.

After brushing his teeth, Bickslow didn't bother changing out of his pyjamas before he picked up the cat and tucked it under one arm, and marched out into the building hallway to go and knock on Lucy's door. He really didn't want to be seeing her, but he didn't want to be stuck looking after her stupid pet, either. But after waiting for a few minutes, and knocking twice more, Bickslow realised that Lucy just wasn't home.

So he marched back to his apartment next door and let Blair jump down as he grabbed her old water bowl and filled it up for her, then went and got his phone off charge. Why he still had Lucy's number, he wasn't even sure. As soon as he'd finished typing out the message to her, he stopped, and after just a moment, he erased the text and opened up the contacts again to call her instead.

* * *

Lucy couldn't help but groan when she saw her phone light up on the table, and she groaned again when she saw _'Stupid Cat Thief'_ on the screen. Of all the times for Bickslow to be calling her, it had to be right then when she was actually having a really good time for a change. Honestly, she was beginning to think he was just out to ruin her life.

"Sorry, it's my stupid neighbour…" she mumbled, setting her drink down again. They'd only ended up at Gajeel's restaurant for just a few drinks, but it still beat Netflix and _Star Trek_. Well, _almost_. "I should see what he wants." She was almost inclined to just ignore it, but she'd always been bad at ignoring calls and messages.

"Go ahead," Cobra said.

Lucy brought the phone up to her ear. "What is it, you moron?" she snapped. Cobra couldn't help but stare wide eyed at her for a moment. "If it's not important, I'm hanging up right now because you're interrupting my date and I do not appreciate it."

"Uh… You know this isn't a date, right?" Cobra mumbled. Sure, he liked her and all, but he definitely had no intentions of _dating_ her. He thought he'd made that pretty obvious, too.

Lucy knew that, but she could only mouth that she knew that as she heard Bickslow respond, "You're on a date? Already?" Lucy couldn't help but grit her teeth a little. "Well, anyway, Blair's here, that's all I had to say," he continued quickly. "But how about I just continue to look after _your_ pet for you anyway, since she still seems to like me better and all. Plus, it's one less thing for you and your _date_ to worry about."

"She does not!" Lucy shouted.

"Oh, I think she does," Bickslow insisted. "But, just one more thing… Please try and keep the noise down later, alright? The walls are thin and I have to get up early because I'm a teacher, remember? Oh, and, please remember to use some form of protection, too. I'd hate to be stuck teaching any of your demonic spawn in the next five years."

Lucy didn't get a chance to say anything else before Bickslow hung up on her, and it took great effort not to slam her phone down onto the table and scream. He was just so _infuriating_. How she could ever have put up with him, she wasn't sure. He made her want to rip her hair out. "God, he is just so… So…" She struggled the find the word as she continued to clench her fists and try and contain her anger.

"Irritating?" Cobra suggested.

"Yes, but… no." Lucy shook her head and picked up her drink. "Infuriating works best, I think."

"Right…" He wasn't lost to the fact that she was mad right then. It was kind of scary if he was honest, too. "And that was your neighbour, right?"

"Yes. _Bickslow_."

"Ah, the one you were dating. Got it." He couldn't help but chuckle when Lucy scowled at him through her lashes. "What did he want anyway?"

"He has my cat again," she muttered. "Wanted me to go get her, I guess."

"Well, we can go if you want…" Cobra wouldn't really mind anyway. He could only deal with crowds for short periods of time, and for a Thursday, the place was still pretty busy. He'd gotten Lucy out her house anyway, so he considered the night a success already.

"No! No. He can wait, damn it!"

"If you say so…" Cobra mumbled, sipping and looking away.

But, it was only after a few more moments that Lucy cursed and quickly finished her drink, picking up her phone and her bag off the back of her chair to then storm out of the restaurant bar. Cobra quickly realised it was time to go, so he finished his own drink and went and paid the bill before catching up to her in front of the elevator.

After the short cab ride home that had mostly been in silence, Lucy only apologised and hugged Erik goodnight - something he'd grown to tolerate but wouldn't dare admit out loud. Cobra didn't really mind either way though, so he was quite happy to go back to his own apartment on the second floor.

When Lucy reached the fifth floor, she didn't go to her apartment. Instead, she walked straight up to Bickslow's door and knocked on it angrily. It opened a few moments later, and Lucy didn't hesitate to shout, "What the _hell_ is wrong with you?" Because as far as she was concerned, it was a serious question.

 _Fine, of course, let yourself in. That's fine._ Bickslow only slammed the door shut after Lucy as he turned around to face her again. "Me? You're asking _me_ that?" he responded. Admittedly, he hadn't expected Lucy to show up so quickly, especially after hearing she'd been on a stupid _date_ \- which, honestly, had just really fucking stung.

"Yes, I'm asking you that!" Lucy shouted again. "Because I don't know what it is I did to make you hate me so much and why you're being such a jackass to me all of a sudden!"

"Jesus, Lucy, do you _seriously_ think I hate you?" He _wanted_ to. He _wished_ he did. But he didn't, and he never had. Bickslow was kind of amazed that Lucy even thought that he did, because he had no idea where she'd gotten that from. "You're the one who hates _me_ , so I should be asking you what the hell it is I did to deserve that," he shouted back. He almost didn't want to know what it was that had happened, but at least while they were shouting at each other they were talking about things, and Bickslow was kind of glad for that.

"You left, that's what."

"What?"

"You just disappeared," she continued quietly, folding her arms and staring down at the scuff marks on the wooden floor. "And you just ignored me the entire time you were gone and I still don't know what it is I did to make you want to do that."

Bickslow almost wanted to reach out to comfort her, because he knew that he'd somehow hurt her - how, he still wasn't sure - but he knew better than to do so. It wasn't really his place anymore. "I was at my mother's funeral," he said softly, looking to Blair still curled up on his sofa.

"Seriously? You're going to use that as an excuse?" Lucy scoffed.

"It's not an excuse."

Lucy looked up quickly, and when Bickslow looked back at her, all Lucy wanted to do was hit her head against a brick wall for being so stupid. He had his pranks and his jokes sometimes, but of all the things he could joke about, Lucy knew it wasn't that. "I… I didn't…" She felt like the biggest idiot on the planet right then, and it was tempting to just pick up her cat and go back to her own apartment next door to hide. "I am so, so sorry, Bickslow…"

He gave a small shrug as he sighed and went to go sit on the lounge next to where Blair was curled up. "She's been sick since I was a kid. Kind of saw it coming," he mumbled. Granted, he hadn't known it would be then, but he'd still been able to see her in the hospital before she'd died. Her doctors had said that it was time to start saying goodbye, and the morning after his dad had called him to tell him that, he'd been on a plane and heading back home to say goodbye to his mother while he still could.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Lucy asked softly, picking Blair up gently so she could sit in her place.

"Didn't really know how to." Bickslow wished he had, though. He just really hadn't known how to bring it up, and certainly not in a text. He hadn't really been interested in _talking_ to anyone, either. "I didn't really have the time to, either. I was just… I was just busy at the hospital, and then getting the funeral organised and dealing with her estate and all that," he added. Lucy making it obvious that she hadn't wanted anything to do with him when he'd gotten back had just made it all worse, too.

Lucy didn't think it made any sense, but she knew not to question it. She'd already made a fool of herself. "I'm really sorry, though. I didn't know," she whispered. "I wouldn't have been such a bitch if I'd known, honestly…"

"It's fine. I probably should've at least told you I was visiting family or something."

"No, it's okay. But, uh… Does that mean you don't um… hate me?"

Bickslow couldn't help but chuckle as he leant back and closed his eyes. "Nah. I'm _hoping_ you don't actually hate me, either."

"I only did because I thought you hated me, but… You did just call my non-existent children _demonic spawn…"_ She wasn't quite sure how she felt about that.

"I'm bitter and jealous. Don't judge me," he mumbled.

Lucy did take just a little bit of delight in knowing that it was Bickslow's jealousy talking, but she mostly just felt bad for it all. None of it would've happened at all if they'd just fucking _talked_ to each other. "Well, you don't have anything or anyone to be jealous of, if that makes you feel any better."

"You just said you were on a _date_. I have plenty to be jealous of."

"It wasn't a date. It was just Erik."

"Lucy, I literally have no idea who that is."

She tried not to roll her eyes as Bickslow sat up and looked to her again. "He's the one who lives downstairs. I was arguing with him in the lobby that one time," she said. "He called me a psychopath and asked you if you knew me."

"You're dating _that_ asshole?" he said.

"I'm not dating him, I just said that," Lucy repeated. "Although… I have been sleeping with him…"

Bickslow couldn't help but scowl as he sat back again. "Mm, so I've heard," he mumbled. "Thin walls and your bed creaks."

"No it doesn't!"

"It really does."

Lucy huffed and crossed her arms. Blair jumped off her lap at the same time just to curl up on Bickslow's, and she tried not to be a little offended. She already knew the cat liked him better, as little as she wanted to admit it. Still, she could tolerate sharing her cat again if it meant things with Bickslow would go back to normal, even if they were just friends. She wouldn't entirely blame Bickslow if he decided it was probably better they didn't, especially after she'd made a giant fool of herself and acted like a childish brat, but she hoped they could at least be friends again.

"So are we, um… You know… good?" she asked quietly.

"I suppose," Bickslow sighed. He wanted things to be better, too, but he didn't really want to _just_ be her friend. Although if she was already with someone else, then he supposed being her friend would just have to do. "Don't see why we wouldn't be, now that it's established we're both just horrible adults who don't know how to communicate properly."

"I guess that's true," Lucy laughed. Hesitantly, she shifted just so she could lean her hand on Bickslow's shoulder, one hand reaching to gently scratch Blair's head. She figured it was okay when Bickslow didn't move, and she added softly, "I missed you, though. I kinda wish none of this happened, and I'm still sorry for making you think I hated you."

"I'm sorry for not telling you where I went, and I missed you, too," he said quietly. "I told my mum about you, though. Before she died."

"You… You did?"

"Yeah. She asked what I'd been up to, and I told her that this really nice girl moved into the apartment next door, and how she was a total sci-fi nerd and had a super weird cat with boundary issues."

"I am not a sci-fi nerd, thank you."

"You sleep with a _Kylo Ren_ duvet and watch _Star Wars_ and _Star Trek_ religiously."

"…Okay, that's fair," she mumbled.

Bickslow couldn't help but chuckle to himself again. "Anyway, she said you sounded like a lovely person, and that she would've loved to meet you."

"I would've loved to meet her, too."


End file.
